


Forever is a Long Time Without You

by lornesgoldenhair



Series: Anushri Tails [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-11
Updated: 2015-03-11
Packaged: 2018-03-17 09:47:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 66,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3524651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lornesgoldenhair/pseuds/lornesgoldenhair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after Last Christmas. Clara and the Doctor begin a new phase in their relationship but Clara's happiness is soon marred by nightmares and visions. On a trip to the Anushri world her fears become reality. Can she save the Doctor or will she face forever alone? M for sexy stuff, angst, themes of loss later in the story. Whouffaldi.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

 

‘I don’t even know who to thank,’ the TARDIS door swung shut behind them and the Doctor moved past Clara to the console, his step unusually light and easy. His habitually stern features kept threatening to break into a surprisingly dazzling smile.

‘Santa Claus?’ she suggested, one eyebrow raised, the Doctor rolled his eyes at her but without much real intent.

‘Yes, yes, Santa Claus, I’m never going to hear the end of that one am I?’ he stifled his grin and looked down at the controls, struggling to keep his very genuine joy under sufficient wraps to allow him to retain his dignity. Clara decided to pounce on it while he was at his most vulnerable and with something not unlike a skip in her step she closed the gap between him and assaulted him with a side on hug.

‘Clara for heaven’s sake,’ he stiffened briefly in her arms and then puffed his protest at her making her giggle at the sheer typical Doctor-y-ness that she had missed so much. When his muscles relaxed she squeezed him harder and buried her head against the soft material of his hoody.

‘Protest all you like,’ she remarked, ‘It’s not every day you get reunited with someone you love,’ he stiffened again at that one and his heart rate seemed to double against her cheek. It was her turn to sigh in mock frustration, ‘Impossible man,’ she said quietly, her words heavy with meaning after their dream conversation. ‘ _My_ impossible man.’

Clara leaned back and took in his response to that, the slight widening of his eyes before he looked away from her with the rare bashfulness that sometimes escaped from his hardened exterior. Clara reached up with one hand and stroked some wayward snowflakes from his hair before letting the backs of her knuckles softly graze his cheek. She saw him swallow and his eyes close at her touch and it made her smile somewhere deep inside. After a moment studying his face she reached up and gently kissed the corner of his mouth, allowing her thumb to trace the contours of his lip as she pulled away.

‘It all starts here,’ she said softly and his eyes opened onto her gaze, ’No more lies, not to each other, not to ourselves, no trying to second guess the other person or do what we think might be best for them without actually _asking_ them,’ he looked away with a tiny flicker of guilt and she rubbed his chest reassuringly. ‘We’re both at fault there, Doctor,’ she said with a wry smile, ‘But not anymore, fresh start,’ her smile widened.

‘Clara…’ her name rumbled from his lips.

‘If you’re about to say something doubtful or negative or spoil the moment in any way you can stop right there,’ she warned. ‘You, me, the TARDIS, it’s all going to be fine.’

‘Is it?’ he asked with genuine curiosity. There was something at once hopeful and resigned in his eyes as though he wanted to believe but experience had taught him not to.

‘I’ve made my choice,’ Clara said, ‘I’m full time TARDIS girl now.’

His eyebrows seemed to do a dance of puzzlement at her words. ‘You are?’

‘Yes? Aren’t I? Did I miss something?’

‘Well I thought you’d…’

‘What? I’d what?’

‘I thought you’d want to go back to Wednesdays.’

Clara took a step back, ‘You did?’

They looked at one another across a suddenly larger gap and the atmosphere shifted gear a little more towards awkward. The Doctor stuffed his hands in his trouser pockets and looked down at his feet before risking a glance at her.

‘You’d rather be full time?’ he ventured.

‘Your other companions were full time,’ Clara pointed out a little sharply.

‘Yes, but you always said…’

‘What?’

‘Well your life, family… job… you didn’t want to lose all that.’

‘And prioritising those things worked out so well for me,’ she snapped. ‘Don’t you want me to be here full time? Is that it?’

‘Clara, no!’

‘No?! No what?’

‘No of course I want you to be here full time, I just didn’t want to presume. Your life away from here has always been so important to you so I assumed you’d…’

‘Stop assuming, and presuming. Stop all kinds of ‘suming! This is where we go wrong all the time!’ The Doctor flinched a little at her tone and Clara took a second to calm herself before she continued. ‘Doctor, I want to be here full time. With you.’

‘Oh,’

‘Is that OK?’ she stared at him levelly.

‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes!’ she said with more than a touch of despair.

‘OK.’

‘Good,’ she stepped back towards him, ‘And just so we are clear and we’re not crossing wires again already, when I say with you, I mean _with_ you.’

‘With me?’

‘ _With_ you,’ she attempted to communicate with her eyes but he didn’t seem to be following, ‘You and me, together, properly together…. As a couple,’ she finished bluntly and with not a little awkwardness on her part too. Her heart had decided its course but actually verbalising it to the Doctor felt rather strange.

Evidently it felt strange to him too. ‘Oh,’ he said hurriedly and dropped his gaze from her again, a slight blush creeping up his cheeks. Clara spotted it and immediately thought it adorable. Silly frustrating Time Lord. She lifted her hand to feel the warmth from his usually cool cheek.

‘No one else compares,’ she explained as he all but consumed himself with embarrassment, ‘You were in the same dream as me Doctor, you saw it too. I could live another sixty two years and no one would come close.’ He wriggled under her hand. ‘There’s no rush though,’ she said gently, her heart aching for his awkwardness, ‘Now I’m full time we’ve all the time in the world.’

He looked for a second as though he might argue with her about her concept of time as a human being rather different to his as a Time Lord and how really the rest of her lifetime was just a blink in his timeline but to her relief he decided against protesting and instead rewarded her with a slight nod and another of his shy smiles. Clara decided that was enough intense emotional talk for one day, drained as they were by dream crab events and after enforcing another kiss on his cheek took a pace back to his visible relief, at least she thought it was relief, he half looked disappointed but quickly recovered.

‘Right,’ she said, ‘Now we’ve sorted that, we need to sort other things.’

‘Such as?’

‘Such as my belongings from home, starting with some clothes that aren’t this nightie. I can’t believe I let anyone see me in this let alone total strangers. I only wore it because it was so cold, it’s completely unflattering. Shona and the others must have thought I have absolutely no fashion sense at all,’ she plonked herself in one of the jumpseats while the Doctor fired up the TARDIS engines.

‘Just be grateful you don’t sleep nude,’ he said under his breath. Clara shot him a look of shock and outrage from behind her crossed arms and angry pout but when he looked up at her, blue eyes filled with barely supressed humour she burst out laughing.

‘Yeah, OK that would have been a hard one to explain to Santa and his Elves,’ she agreed.

‘Makes you wonder what kind of thing they stumble across in bedrooms across the land when they drop down people’s chimneys,’ he mused.

‘Doctor!’ Clara gaped at him. He pulled a lever and winked at her.

 

XXXXXXXXX

 

‘You can help, you know,’ Clara said from the bottom of the walk in wardrobe where she was struggling to free her shoe collection from rabid dust bunnies.

‘I wouldn’t want to interfere with your system,’ the Doctor said languidly, coffee cup poised at his lips. He was leaning against the TARDIS door from where he had parked it in the corner of her bedroom and he looked as though he had no intention whatsoever of giving up that position.

Clara blew a strand of hair out of her face and turned to look at him. ‘What system?’

He waved a hand in the direction of several half-filled cardboard boxes on the bed, ‘You know, you have a list and a system, for packing.’

‘It’s not a very difficult system to grasp Doctor, I’m sure even you could manage to put books in the box marked ‘books.’

‘Why do you need to bring books? You’ve seen the TARDIS library.’

‘I want _my_ books,’ Clara sneezed as a wayward dust bunny assaulted her. ‘You know, my own personal belongings, filled with memories and things in the margin that I wrote when I was a student. They aren’t just books they’re my thoughts, my _companions_ from… from a bygone age,’ she finished pleased with her phrasing.

The Doctor shook his head and took a sip of coffee. ‘Well let me know when you are done packing your companions and we’ll get going,’ he turned and vanished into the TARDIS.

‘Oi! Time Lord! Get back here with your so called super human strength and lift these for me.’

‘I’m a Time Lord not a removal man,’ came the reply.

‘I could hurt myself,’ Clara called playfully, ‘I’m only human…’

‘Well if you’re only human you should know better than to have so many heavy belongings you aren’t capable of shifting by yourself.’ He appeared at the door again minus his cup and Clara took the opportunity to give him one of her best looks. ‘Oh don’t do that… stop it with the eyes, that’s not fair.’

‘I’m only little, I could really damage my back…’

‘Why are you only little when it suits you to be? The rest of the time you complain when I call you short.’

‘Please?’ Clara looked up at him from under her lashes and she saw something soften in him. His mouth quirked and he refused to look at her. She felt warm inside at the sight.

‘Is this what it’s going to be like?’ he asked stepping down from the ship, ‘Am I to be wound round your little finger so easily for the rest of time?’

‘You were wound round it anyway,’ Clara quipped. Pointing she said, ‘That one first, it’s got the heaviest ones in it and I want to make sure it gets moved before you make some excuse not to help anymore.’

With a sigh he bent and lifted the heaviest box with ease. Clara stared after him as he disappeared into the TARDIS. That really had been very heavy, maybe this Time Lord strength thing wasn’t just an idle boast after all. It suddenly occurred to her that if she was to be living full time with him she’d probably see other hitherto hidden sides too, and the thought made her smile with something like pride to be trusted with sharing his existence that way. She caught herself biting down on her lip with nervous excitement at images of possible domesticity but when the Doctor re-emerged a moment later he found Clara back in the wardrobe busy-ing herself and pointedly not watching him lift heavy things or thinking about domestic bliss.

_Don’t get too domestic too soon, Oswald, you’ll terrify him._

‘You are filthy,’ he commented glancing down at her dust covered jeans, ‘I don’t remember your flat being so dirty.’

‘Still as tactful as ever I see,’ Clara nipped back and then fell into a fit of coughing. ‘Been busy, anyway no-one hoovers the inside of a wardrobe.’

‘You probably used to, part of your control freak nature.’ He sat on the bed between boxes.

‘Oi, keep lifting things, I’ll pack, you move stuff.’

The Doctor idly flicked through the contents of one box, his long fingers combing through book titles and paper.

‘What have you been busy with?’ he asked.

‘Life.’ Clara hauled out a pair of boots and blew a cobweb from them.

‘The life you’re giving up to come with me?’ he said quietly.

‘Yes that’s the one,’ she dumped the boots in a box, ‘Didn’t have much going for it recently.’ She looked up at him noting the sudden sadness in his gaze, ‘Stop that,’ she admonished, ‘It’s not your fault.’

‘I would like to say that yes it is, but I know there’s no point arguing with you…’

‘Right… so don’t,’ she rummaged through a few more bottom of the wardrobe items, ‘What about you, what have you been busy with?’

‘Me?’

‘Yes, you, how long’s it been for you, how many planets have you saved? You’re usually full of stories. I’m seeing a distinct lack of stories…’

‘Oh,’ he looked down at his hands with a silence strong enough to make Clara turn and look at him. ‘No planets,’ he said, ‘Not much of anything really.’ She got up and wiped her dusty hands down her jeans before squeezing in between him and a box.

‘No wild tales then?’ she asked.

‘Not this time.’

‘Well I’m sure we’ll get dragged into something sooner or later, we always do,’ she smiled at him. ‘So what were you doing? Shacked up with otters? Sitting on a cloud? Floating in the time Vortex?’

There was a beat before he answered.

‘Missing you,’ he said.

The words felt like warmed honey in her chest and she felt herself blush at his uncharacteristic directness. She placed a hand on his knee and felt him move a little closer, his breath cool on her burning cheek. When his lips hesitantly made contact with her skin she instinctively dragged her hand up his thigh a little. He didn’t move away and she had the sudden sense that they were crossing a bridge together, slowly and surely.

‘You have cobwebs in your hair,’ he said softly, his fingers picking strands of silk from her head, ‘And you are dusty,’ he observed. Clara looked down at his lap where streaks of grey dust now marked his trousers.

‘Oops,’ she said.

‘You’re forgiven,’ he said lightly. The cobwebs removed he was running his fingers through her hair fully, his touch firm on her scalp to the point she thought she might actually start to purr. She felt him reach round to pull her tighter to him, his lips dipping to her neck and a charge of arousal flared through her body. She slid her hands up over his hips and under his jacket.

‘Clara, you’re determined to ruin my clothes.’

‘You can get new clothes.’

She felt him smile against her and nuzzle at her neck comfortably. So this was what relaxed Doctor felt like, she could live with this. He kissed her neck softly and held her like that for a moment longer before releasing her and slipping off the bed. Clara sat in a daze and when she blinked back into existence saw that he had lifted another box as instructed and gone back inside the TARDIS.

‘Stupid boxes,’ she muttered and glanced at the wardrobe. Maybe the Doctor was right, maybe she didn’t need quite as much stuff as she was thinking of packing. Packing or following him into the TARDIS? Clara’s gaze flicked between the two points, her heart being tugged in the direction of the console room.

‘Sod it, TARDIS has a library. And a wardrobe.’ And the Doctor. What else did she really need? She hopped off the bed and into the waiting ship.

The Doctor snapped his fingers and the TARDIS doors shut behind her.

‘All done?’ he asked.

‘Yes, all done,’ she made for him across the room and repositioned her hands under his jacket, the sensation plugging some sort of awful gap that had been felt at their separation moments before.

‘So soon?’ she caught the glint in his eye as he spoke.

‘Yes… I… Wait… Are you deliberately manipulating me so you can get out of moving my things?’ Clara asked horrified.

The Doctor made sure to pull the TARDIS lever before answering in a deep amused tone. ‘Me? No… course not.’

 

XXXXXXX

He hadn’t changed a thing and it felt like home.

Clara unfolded and folded jumpers and tops and slipped them into the drawers the TARDIS supplied for her in her old room. It had been months since she had been there, possibly longer given that the Doctor could quite easily have been away for years if he had chosen to do so, and yet not a single thing had moved. She placed things from her flat amongst alien trinkets from her various adventures and marvelled at how well everything seemed to fit together. She started to hum under her breath as she worked, thinking vaguely of the Doctor being down the corridor in the console room where he belonged and now where she belonged too.

This was really happening, he was really back, and she was back too, and something had finally clicked into position as he had taken her hand and asked her to come with him to the TARDIS, something they could both finally start to admit. It was exhilarating and frightening and familiar and right all in equal measures and the emotions played across her face as the adrenaline came in fits and starts between her ribs. The long cold months since Danny’s death stretched behind her and for the first time since that day the future looked oddly hopeful if somewhat unusual. Well she liked unusual, she had missed it. And as she thought of the Doctor her heart jumped again to know that she didn’t ever have to go back to a life without him in it.

Her hum went up a notch and she began to put words to it.

‘God rest ye merry gentlemen, yet nothing thee dismay…’

Well it was still Christmas day.

‘You sound cheerful,’ he remarked from the door. Clara jumped and threw a pair of balled socks at him. He ducked easily. Superior Time Lord reflexes she expected.

‘It’s Christmas! It’s what people do at Christmas, sing carols and…’

‘Throw socks at people?’ he smirked.

‘No! Only I do that apparently. I was just feeling…’

‘Festive?’

‘Not festive, festive is the wrong word. Cheerful, you were right, cheerful is the word.’

‘Good,’ he looked at her kindly, ‘But please don’t establish sock flinging as a new Christmas tradition.’

‘I won’t, this Christmas is weird enough already, but at least you haven’t died this year,’ Clara retorted and then immediately regretted her choice of words when he flinched at her comment.

‘Sorry, last year wasn’t a great Christmas for either of us,’ she conceded. The Doctor stared for a long time at the tip of his polished boot.

‘No… it wasn’t,’ he said. ‘But I suppose you’re right today is technically Christmas day.’

‘Don’t worry I think I’m all Santa’d out for one year,’ Clara returned to folding clothes. She suspected the Doctor would rather like to avoid Christmas entirely having lived in a town of the same name for over six hundred years. There was too much of a good thing after all.

‘That’s a pity,’ he said drawing a curious look from her.

‘You hate all that stuff,’ she said.

‘Do I?’

‘Yes, it’s the exact opposite of you on so many levels.’

‘Oh,’ his eyes roamed around the room absently, ‘Well if you’re right, and from what I remember Clara Oswald is _always_ right,’ she glared at him, ‘I’d better clear away dinner then…’

‘Dinner?’

‘Yes, seeing as you’re all Christmas’d out.’

‘ _Christmas_ dinner?’

He allowed his eyes to meet hers again. ‘Well I meant what I said, Clara, in the dream, I won’t necessarily make you wear the party hat but the rest of it, the meal, the cracker, we should do that every year…’

Clara felt her eyes mist as she watched him and the effort he was putting into making her happy. ‘You’re really doing this in style aren’t you?’ she joked and failed to appear casual.

‘Don’t get sentimental on me,’

‘Christmas is all about sentiment,’

He sighed, ‘Yes so I’m beginning to see, I’ll do my best but don’t expect miracles. Now come on… Turkey’s getting cold.’

 

XXXXXXXX

Clara had to admit it the TARDIS could cook. Well actually the Doctor could cook but she didn’t want to admit that. Not to his face anyway or she would never hear the end of it. Right now though all she wanted to do was lie on the couch and digest and luckily the ship had provided a sofa in what turned out to be the Doctor’s private study. It was a room which tapped into all of Clara’s romantic notions about Victorian literature, lit by gas lamp and firelight with rich paintings on the walls and books everywhere. She noted with a sort of smug glee that the Doctor had arranged for the room to be decorated for the season, in period decorations of course, something which she had to concede looked a good deal classier than tacky tinsel.

Clara was drowsy and the surroundings comfortable but a part of her didn’t want to miss a moment of this new world she had chosen to live in. This was the Doctor’s very private world, beyond the adventures and the console room, tucked away in the depth of his beloved TARDIS with his belongings and his memories. She knew that some of the paintings on the walls here were done by him, that some of the people in them might have been past companions, and that maybe he would share that with her. Already they were becoming closer. It felt like they had expelled enough energy on keeping apart and that now they had taken the decision to be something more, they were pulled together by an unseen force much stronger than either of them.

They had shared a meal and with each mouthful Clara had watched him relax more. There was something magical about his transformation from the entirely careworn Doctor who had come to her on the rooftop just hours before to this decidedly animated version who seemed to blossom under her gaze, suddenly daring to believe that yes she really was there and yes, he was good enough, she wanted him. She couldn’t stop watching, couldn’t take her eyes from him and even now as she leaned into the soft cushions she was merely suspended, waiting for him to join her.

When he did he sat at her side and without hesitation slipped one arm around her shoulder pulling her close. Every time he made a little gesture of affection over the course of the evening Clara noted and filed it for future reference, proof of his feelings that she still couldn’t quite believe. It seemed that when he had the confidence, he bloomed, and touch came more easily to the man who never hugged. Clara thought of their parting and the words he’d used to explain why he avoided each embrace.

_A hug is just a way of hiding your face._

She understood that now there was no need to hide, for either of them, from either of them and the knowledge that they were finally as one had given him the strength to be vulnerable with her. He nuzzled her hair and let her curl against him and a stillness settled over the room that didn’t need to be broken by talk or action. There was endless time for that and no hurry to take things further yet. These first days would only come once and she wanted to feel each moment, each beat of his hearts beneath her hands. It was perfect. It was all going to be alright.

She closed her eyes and listened to the crackle of wood on the fire.

‘Long day?’ he asked with a hint of amusement in his voice. Clara opened her eyes again to see him standing by the mantel with a glass of something in his hand. Asleep. She’d fallen asleep and he’d moved out from under her, leaving her curled on her side.

‘Well I was busy sleeping but then this alien came and dragged me out of bed in the middle of the night…’

He snorted, ‘Sorry next time I’ll let your brains get digested until it’s a more convenient hour,’ he sipped from his glass and Clara watched as the firelight danced in the crystal.

‘Touché,’ she replied and scooted up the sofa a little. ‘Come sit with me?’

The Doctor looked at her thoughtfully before dropping his gaze to his glass. He made no move to join her.

‘Please?’ Clara said. He seemed torn and she could feel her anxiety rising inside her. He’d been so relaxed before, where had this reticence come from? She vowed never to fall asleep again and was about to make some sort of move herself when he placed his glass on a nearby table and crossed the room, sliding into the loveseat beside her. Clara turned to face him, at the same time stopping him from escaping by pinning him in the corner.

‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘For doing all of this.’

‘You’re very welcome,’ he replied softly. Clara let her hand edge forward and take one of his only realising that she had been holding her breath when he entwined their fingers and she reflexively exhaled. ‘I didn’t expect you to be the nervous one,’ he said catching her eye.

‘I’m surprising myself here,’ she confessed. Clara felt his free hand gently brush a strand of her hair and then travel slowly down her back, nudging her closer. She felt butterflies flicker in her chest and looked down to find their thighs scissoring each other. She wanted to be closer still, she wanted to be kissing him, running her hands over his chest, feeling his hair between her fingers. Clara closed her eyes and felt a blush come over her face and a shake in her breath. There was a creak and she was aware his weight had shifted on the sofa, that his breath was coming over her jaw now, that his lips were a whisper away.

The hand that held hers pulled back gently taking her with him, positioning her so that her arm wrapped around his waist, pulling her against his body. Clara could feel heat coming from him for the first time and instinctively leaned into it as it seeped through her clothing. She could still feel his breath on her face so tantalisingly close.

‘Doctor, please,’ she murmured.

She wondered if he would say something. She wondered if he would suddenly be filled with doubt or nerves. But she barely had long enough to wonder before his lips came full onto hers, soft, hungry, perfect. She opened her mouth to him and felt a shot of pleasure go through her as his tongue entered her. He was gentle but there was no mistaking the need behind his touch, the palms of his hands hot on her back, hips and breasts.

Between them the heat grew stronger until Clara began to wonder if he was actually on fire. She raised her hands to his chest and tugged at his shirt, pulling apart buttons and reaching skin. But it seared against her fingers and with a sudden gasp of pain she drew back, staring down at where she had been touching. He followed her eyes with a look somewhere between shock and fear.

‘Doctor? What’s happening?’

But it was un-missable and distinctive, there was no mistaking what was happening. The heat burning from his chest was spreading now and as he held out his hands in front of him Clara saw the one thing she had prayed to never witness again as long as she was with him.

The amber fire of regeneration.

XXXXXXXX

‘No!’ Clara shot upright on the sofa with such force that she knocked the Doctor’s glass from his hand. It crashed to the floor and shattered sending sparkling shards of crystal across the candlelit room like hot ashes from fire.

‘Clara!’ his tone was a mixture of irritation and concern. She spun in her place, a haze of sleep spiked with adrenaline leaving her confused, and clamped her hands down over his chest. His shirt and waistcoat were still in place, buttons fastened, and there was no sign of regeneration. Clara stared at her fingers. The Doctor stared at them too and then up at her face with a look that questioned her sanity.

‘Um…’ she said.

‘Clara?’

‘Bad dream?’ she hazarded.

‘You don’t say,’ he replied in a bemused tone. ‘Care to share it?’

‘No!’ she said a little abruptly.

‘There’s no need to be embarrassed Clara, whatever it was sounded like it didn’t start off too badly… sounded rather fun actually…’ Clara flushed as she remembered the first part of her dream and put her hands over her face.

‘Shut up,’ she said.

The Doctor retrieved his sonic from the jacket hung over the back of the sofa and used it to clean up the shattered crystal.

‘OK not another word,’ he smiled, the picture of relaxation and contentment.

‘Shut up!’ Clara sprung up from the sofa and towards the fire. She couldn’t look at him. Her thoughts were racing. So it had been a dream. What the first bit meant was obvious but the second part? He had been regenerating under her touch and regenerating meant dying. But he wasn’t dying like he had been on Trenzalore, worn out by hundreds of years of war, this body was new, a year since his last regeneration. Dying? He couldn’t be dying.

What if he was dying? Why was he dying? What did it have to do with her, if anything? Dream symbolism or dream reality? And if he did die, if he regenerated again how would she cope, she had let him down so badly the last time, she had failed to see past the veil for so long.

She was dimly aware of him rising from the sofa, his tone changing from that pleasant relaxed purr to one of concern and some tension.

‘Clara, what is it? Whatever you dreamed, it’s just a dream.’

‘After what we’ve just been through how can you say that?’ Clara turned to him with a panicked expression. What if they hadn’t woken up and all of this too perfect, too easy intimacy was an illusion?

He spread his arms and turned on the spot a little, ‘No dream crabs, I promise, not one. This time it really is an ordinary dream.’

‘No… it wasn’t…. it might not be dream crabs but it wasn’t ordinary…Not for me.’

‘Care to expand?’

She wrapped her arms around herself and looked painfully into the fire, the heat from it radiating into her eyes almost painfully.

‘Sometimes they aren’t just dreams, sometimes they’re echoes,’ she said quietly.

‘Was this one an echo?’ The Doctor approached her with an air of relaxed curiosity.

‘I… I don’t know I can’t tell…’

‘Well even if it was you can’t change anything about it. Echoes come from the past, other lives, other times, distressing maybe but ultimately harmless.’ He came up behind her and so gently slid his arms around her that she could have wept at his touch. She was still replaying the images of his body burning in her head.

‘I… I think it was an echo…’ she said half to herself.

‘Well if it was don’t worry,’ he leaned down and gently placed a kiss on her neck, drawing her tight against him and she suddenly ached to be kissing him as she had been in the dream. Echo. Maybe. Its image gripped her, it meant something and he had to understand how deeply it frightened her. Clara spun in his arms and very deliberately took hold of his face.

‘What if it isn’t from the past?’ she said to his somewhat surprised countenance.

‘What? Clara this would be a lot easier if you just told me what you dreamt of.’

‘No.’ She couldn’t, she just couldn’t drop that possibility into their lives. If she spoke it out loud it would make it real. It had to be a dream, just a dream, not an echo, not a possibility, just a dream.

‘No?’

She looked down and he sighed. ‘You really are Impossible sometimes,’ he commented with a fond smile, ‘Forget about it, your brain is probably still jumbled from the crabs, everything will be alright I promise, don’t let it spoil this evening, there are much nicer things to think about… or better still don’t think at all.’

He was right, he was the Doctor and he was always right. He would know if there was something wrong, if he was dying, she had to trust him. Clara let her hands slip to his shoulders and then down over his chest as his mouth began to make tracks on her neck again, but the images wouldn’t leave her. Even as he kissed the angle of her jaw and breathed soft air across her lips, even as she opened her mouth in response to his and savoured for the first time the taste of him and the feel of his tongue against hers. Even as she finally held the Doctor in her arms and her body cried out with joy at the sensation of him hard against her flesh, all she could see in her mind was his death.

His words did nothing to reassure her because she knew something which he had forgotten.

Sometimes echoes came from the future.

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

She was awake. Definitely awake. Straight from darkness to consciousness with no nasty surprises in between.

_No more dreams. Thank God._

Clara opened her eyes to discover that she was in her room on the TARDIS and for a few moments struggled to put together the events of the day before. Dream crabs and dreams within dreams, and Santa and Elves, and some reindeer, all merged into the TARDIS and boxes and dinner and…

_And…_

She smiled and stretched as the final part of the evening came back to her before she pulled the covers tight around her. She breathed in and smelled the Doctor’s scent on the sheets and she wanted to close her eyes and laugh with joy. He was on the sheets and on her skin and she was warm and safe. He had been right of course, her brain was recovering from being partially digested by aliens, it had thrown up a mixture of reality and nightmare and frightened her but there was nothing to really fear, her memories were proving that to her now. She ran over them again in her mind, indulging herself before getting ready for the day.

He’d been so gentle and so unhurried. She supposed as a Time Lord there was no particular rush to do anything but it came with the added bonus of making her feel utterly worshipped. He wanted to savour every moment and every touch of her skin, there was no urgency at all as she lay with him, skin on skin, his lips mapping her. There was no expectation, no pressure, no lingering nerves as there always had been with other men, she didn’t need to question if she was good enough, if she was doing things right, if she was really what he wanted because she absolutely was. They had kissed and touched and grown accustomed to being close.

And then they had stopped, stepping back and merely holding one another. Not from uncertainty or from lack of desire but because of the need to cherish. Clara knew that he would be new to her only this once and that those memories should be forged and kept safe. She wanted to learn the layout of his body, where to touch, what felt best, but at a pace that allowed her to build slowly on her knowledge for his pleasure rather than race to the finish. They had been apart for months and before that never intimate, if they were to be truly at ease with each other they had to take time. Clara rolled over to his side of the bed where he had lain with her in his arms as she drifted back into sleep and smiled a wide silly smile. She felt very young, teenage even, exploring a new world of sensations and emotions with him, and her heart tripped with excitement for the day ahead. Suddenly she could restrain her giddiness no more and scuttled out of bed, flinging on her robe and exiting her room in search of him.

He wasn’t in the console room which surprised her and it occurred to her that she wasn’t really up to speed with his daily routine when it didn’t involve running away from monsters or getting tangled up with aliens of one form or another. Yes she’d been with him on the ship for days on end before but always when he was picking her up to go somewhere and do something specific for her entertainment. What did he do in between times? Did he have in between times or did he just skip from Wednesday to Wednesday? How long between Wednesdays did he have? It could be months or seconds. Clara shook her head and vowed to stop asking herself headache inducing questions about time and to ask simpler ones about daily routines.

‘What do people do when they get up?’ she asked in the middle of the corridor. ‘Wait he doesn’t even get up most days he hardly ever sleeps, so I can’t even ask that! No… he got up today, he was in bed, asleep or not he was in it. He got up… so… shower?’

She glanced down the corridor as though expecting a shower to materialise and answer her question. The thought of finding him in the shower did appeal but on the other hand she didn’t want to appear like a stalker so she had better let him have some privacy. He was adapting pretty well to her being in his personal space but that might push things along a bit quick for him.

Clara chewed her lip. ‘Assume shower is done…’ a quick glance up and down the corridor again this time accompanied by a sniff, ‘Toast, I smell toast… he’s making breakfast!’

Incredibly enough the TARDIS allowed Clara to find the kitchen rapidly enough that breakfast wasn’t entirely cold by the time she arrived. The Doctor was leaning against the counter pressing the plunger on a cafetierre. He was wearing a dark coloured and rather sophisticated looking robe. Clara beamed at the domesticated sight, she’d only ever seen this version of him in a suit, fully dressed. Well until last night anyway when he wasn’t fully dressed at all. Her mind started to wander when his voice brought her back to the room.

‘I was going to go to Paris to pick up our breakfast but it occurred to me I couldn’t be bothered getting dressed,’ he remarked over his shoulder as though reading the surface of her mind, ‘You’re a bad influence already…’ the plunger clicked into place and he turn to face her with an easy smile on his lips. ‘How did you sleep?’

‘Good! You’re cooking again? Do you cook all the time? How have I never noticed this before?’

‘Because there isn’t usually a call for cooking when we’re running away from Daleks,’ he answered, ‘No nightmares?’

‘No nightmares,’ Clara conceded, ‘Think you were right, think it was post crab brain scramble.’

‘Good,’ he pulled her close and kissed her forehead, ‘You had me worried there for a bit.’

‘You didn’t look worried.’

‘I often don’t, I am cursed with calmness in the face of disaster, but believe me it doesn’t take much to make me worry about _you_.’ His voice dropped a little by the end of his sentence and he held her gaze a little more intensely than usual.

God he made her feel safe. Which was crazy because she had been in danger hundreds of times in the last few years and most of them had been with him. But there it was that safe but exciting, secure and deliriously happy feeling. She sickened herself and imagined the kids at school graffitiing ‘Ozzie Loves the Doctor’ on the windows. She glanced up at him apparently cooking some sort of omelette and nearly popped with delight.

_Get a grip._

Clara helped herself to coffee in order to try and get her smile under control. If she grinned any harder her face was going to rupture. She had a sudden image of this and stopped smiling, she’d seen creatures with rupturing faces before now and it wasn’t a pretty sight. She reached for some toast to keep her mouth occupied but then he leaned over her to pass her a plate of something delicious and as he did so let his hand slip softly over her shoulder in a relaxed caress. He never did that, he never _ever_ did that, but now he was doing it all the time. She wanted to squeal.

The Doctor sat opposite her and watched her smiling around her fork for a moment with a bemused expression on his face.

‘That good is it?’

‘Hmmph?’

‘My cooking…’

‘No…’

‘No?!’ he cried in mock outrage, ‘I’m hurt, Clara.’

‘No… I meant no that wasn’t what I was grinning about, idiot,’ she threw a serviette at him.

He raised his eyebrows and drank his coffee knowingly and Clara suddenly caught sight of the twitch in his lips that he too was struggling to contain.

‘I’m not the only one who’s all happy this morning,’ she commented in a superior tone.

‘I have reason to be,’ he said, ‘You on the other hand just have me… sorry about that.’

‘Shut up you prat!’

The Doctor leaned back in his chair and rotated his half empty mug on the table.

‘So what’s the plan today?’ he asked.

‘What do you normally do when I’m not here?’

‘You _are_ here…’

‘Yes I know but if I wasn’t, what would you be doing?’

‘Do I have some sort of wildly exciting secret life that goes on when you’re at school you mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘No, Clara, I save up all the excitement for Wednesdays,’ he said drolly. Clara looked at him unsure if he was being serious or not.

‘So…you only save planets on a Wednesday?’ she asked earnestly.

He almost choked on his coffee. ‘Well I suppose I could schedule it thusly, I do have a time machine, but planets do need to be saved on other days, though I try to avoid weekends and religious holidays.’

‘Well I don’t know do I!’

‘You want to know what I do day to day?’ he asked with a little more seriousness.

‘Yes,’ Clara put down her knife and fork and reached for her drink. ‘Tell me.’

‘Well,’ he gave his mug a swirl and then reached to refill it. ‘I look for ways to fill the time, I have a lot of it as you can imagine. I upgrade the TARDIS, visit the occasional old haunt, track down historical figures of interest, try not to interfere with timelines… much… and generally keep myself occupied that way.’

‘Save planets?’

‘Sometimes yes, only the very boring ones that don’t need your involvement,’ he teased.

Clara rolled her eyes. ‘What else? Hang out with old friends?’

‘I have been known to, Vastra keeps a room for me for example.’

Clara watched him with curiosity, ‘What are you not telling me?’ she asked.

‘What makes you think I’m not telling you something?’

‘You talk more usually… you’re skirting….’

‘Ah,’ he admitted, ‘Well it’s not really as exciting when you aren’t here, Clara, it has its moments but I can’t always be involved in alien wars and fighting off Cybermen.’

‘That’s a good thing. I’m not sure I could keep up the pace. So what do you do when its quiet?’ she resumed eating her breakfast while she waited for his reply.

Finally he looked up at her and tilted his head very slightly as he met her eyes. ‘I try not to think,’ he said, ‘I’ve too much time for thinking, too much empty space, so I hop from event to event to make sure it doesn’t get too empty.’

‘Does all that emptiness get boring? You don’t deal well with boring.’

‘No Clara, not boring,’ he said dropping his gaze again, ‘It gets lonely.’

Before she knew it, like a reflex, she had reached out and covered his hand with hers.

‘Not anymore,’ she said. He flicked his eyes up to look at her for a moment and then lifted her hand to his lips.

‘Not anymore,’ he replied pressing a kiss to her knuckles. ‘Clara, there’s somewhere I want to show you.’

 

XXXXXXXXX

‘You own a planet?’ Clara said for the third time.

‘Yes, Clara, I own a planet, why is this so difficult to grasp?’

They had left the TARDIS behind them by several hundred yards and were making their way down a shallow meadowed incline towards a little building in the distance. The grass was a darker shade of green than it would have been on earth and above them the sky glowed orange. For a horrible moment Clara had a flash of her nightmare and the Doctor’s burning chest, but quickly pushed it aside and focused on her surroundings. There were two suns above, both equally bright but this world wasn’t too hot or uncomfortable and the foliage she could see looked lush despite its silver birch colouration. She could hear birds somewhere nearby, at least she thought they were birds, their songs being almost human in pitch.

‘How do you end up owning a planet?’ she queried, you can’t pick them up in the supermarket.’

He chuckled by her side, head down, hands in pockets, a flash of his red jacket lining flaring behind him. ‘No indeed you can’t Clara, I didn’t buy it, I was given it.’

‘ _Given_ it? Who _gave_ you a planet?’

‘A very grateful alien who had one going spare,’ the Doctor said.

‘Ok you need to give me details, you can’t just leave it at that.’ She slowed her steps as the incline became a little steeper and angled her foot sideways to edge down it. Suddenly his arm came around her ribs to steady her and she couldn’t help but glance up at him and smile. He looked younger today, maybe it was the light or maybe…

‘Leader of the Anushri,’ the Doctor said, lending her his arm once she had navigated the slope, ‘There was a war… very boring… I brought it to a halt… anyway he had a few of these planets kicking about and wondered if I might like one as a thank you gift.’

‘Must have been some war you ended.’

‘Well it had been going on for a thousand years, it had got a bit out of hand.’

‘So you got this place?’

‘It wasn’t quite as pretty back then. You see the Anushri are great developers of terraform technology, they collect barren little moons to practice on. This one… Number 183 if I remember rightly, was just moon rock when I got it, didn’t even have an atmosphere. Of course they gave me the terraforming kit too so now and then I pop back and improve bits of it. Helps having the TARDIS because I don’t have to wait around hundreds of years for the oxygen to generate or the valleys to be eroded or whatever the next stage might be. I can just hop forward and see if I like the final outcome and if I don’t I hop back and redesign it. There’s only me here so I can do what I like with it.’

‘Wait wait wait…’ Clara slowed him down, ‘You own it _and_ you designed it all?’

They were closing in on the little building she had seen from the door of the TARDIS and she could see now that it appear to be a cottage and a rather quaint one at that.

‘Yes, thought I might retire here…’

‘You won’t ever retire…’ she laughed.

‘Well there was a point I thought I only had a finite amount of regenerations and that bow tie boy would have to age naturally and die _somewhere_. Of course that ended up being on Trenzalore which wasn’t what I’d envisaged for my decrepitude at all. Now I seem to have been given a whole new set of lives but the original plan was to end my days somewhere peaceful, somewhere to call home. You can let go of my arm Clara….’

‘Hmm?’

‘You’re clinging on for dear life, I think you’ve stopped the circulation.’

Clara looked down to where her hands were clamped hard around his bicep and released him suddenly. ‘Sorry… I… I don’t like thinking about you dying…’

‘Regenerating.’

‘Same thing… sort of… upsetting thing.’

‘Not happening any time soon,’ he assured her.

_It had better not._

‘Clara are you alright?’

She forced herself to look back at him and smiled brightly, ‘Yes, fine, is that your house?’ she pointed at the cottage.

A tiny smile crossed his lips, ‘That Clara is _ours._ ’

‘Ours?’

‘Well unless you’re insisting on sleeping in a tent…’ he broke away from her and walked ahead down a narrow path towards the cottages pretty gardens, ‘We share everything now, Clara… or hadn’t you worked that one out yet?’ He turned back to her a few yards ahead, ‘Well come on!’ he called.

Clara trotted down the path after her and he caught her in one of his arms as they approached the front door to the little building. Close up she could see now that it was made from rough hewn pink tinted stone and that pink flowers surrounded the doorframe and hung from windowboxes.

‘Doctor there is an alarming amount of pink round here,’ she teased.

He swung open the heavy wooden door and laughed, ‘Yes well I didn’t chose that,’

‘Oh? One of your wives?’ Clara was surprised to hear a note of jealousy in her voice.

‘They never came here, I didn’t let them, or anyone else. No-one knows about it,’ he replied as they lingered on the doorstep. ‘This place is my sanctuary… from everything… including wives… especially wives...’

Clara snorted. ‘Glad you feel you can bring me here then. So who picked the pink?’

‘My mother.’

‘Your…?’

‘Mother… yes… I did have one.’

‘But isn’t she… I mean didn’t she…?’

‘Die? A long time ago, yes. Clara I should explain, this house, when I say it’s my house, I mean it is just that. I don’t mean I just designed it and built it here I mean it was my house long before this planet ever existed. It existed somewhere else when I was very young. Clara look at the sky, look at the trees…’ he nodded behind her and then raised his eyebrows at her meaningfully. ‘Where does this place remind you of?’

Clara looked out at the meadow and the horizon, and the suns and sky and colours of the Doctor’s little world. The penny suddenly dropped and she spun back to him.

‘You built your home,’ she said, ‘You built Gallifrey.’

He smiled sadly, ‘It’s a poor imitation, but it’s perhaps as close as I’ll get.’

‘Oh Doctor,’ she suddenly felt so unhappy for him that it ached. That there was a part of him that so desperately missed his world that he had sculpted a copy of it and kept it hidden from those around him for what? For fear they would find it to be a weakness in him, this expression of loss and need? She impulsively took his hand and squeezed it, ‘Thank you for bringing me here,’ she said. He looked away and for a second she felt his awkward vulnerability return and sadness hover around him like mist.

_This is a huge deal._

‘Come on show me inside,’ she said cheerfully, ‘Give me the tour,’ her bright smile seemed to spur him on and he pushed the door wider.

‘I lived here with my parents when I was very, very young, before they sent me away to school, military school, at the time a miserable and traditional Time Lord education…’ An image of the cold barn Clara had accidently visited in his childhood flashed up in her mind. So he’d been torn away from home and made to live amongst strangers… and a military school? She suddenly had a better grasp of why he disliked soldiers. ‘But here… here was a good deal happier,’ he went on his tone lifting as he moved around the room, his hand lighting on objects.

The cottage was small but perfectly formed she decided, a terracotta floor covered at points with deep pile rugs, hand woven, and a large fireplace in the sitting area. The furniture was homely and rough hewn but there was evidence of love and care in the well polished brass that trimmed the fittings and beyond in the kitchen she could see a wood burning stove complete with cooking pot. There were nick knacks and paintings on surfaces and books on the floor, and the room had the look of one well lived in and well used by a family who spent much time seated around the fire.

‘I like it,’ Clara declared. The Doctor laughed.

‘Well that’s a relief.’

‘What’s upstairs?’

‘Bedrooms.’

She couldn’t resist but to cock her eyebrows at him playfully and received a sigh of mock irritation.

‘I suppose you’re going to insist I show you?’ he said pulling open a door to reveal an antiquated wooden staircase, ‘Right let’s get it over with…’ He led her up the stairs which opened onto a bright landing lit by a large window overlooking the meadow. Another doorway and they emerged into a master bedroom.

‘This I _did_ change,’ the Doctor explained, ‘Wouldn’t feel right sleeping in my parents’ room.’ Clara pulled a face. ‘Don’t worry it’s had a total makeover, my tastes were always a little more decadent than theirs.’

It was vaguely Tudor in style with a heavy wooden bed with a tall carved bedpost at each corner. The colours were light and fresh however but Clara noted a good deal of lace which she hadn’t expected of him. She ran her hand over the soft coverlets and felt the downy consistency of the pillows before plopping onto the deep mattress and bouncing twice to test it.

‘I like this too,’ she said.

He watched her for a time and she wondered if he was trying to memorise the moment. She thought of how he had planned for a long retirement here and how for him that would mean hundreds of years alone in the cottage. Now she was here too but one day she knew he would be alone again, he had lived two thousand years already, he could live another two thousand with ease and while her love might always be with him she knew she could not. She felt hot tears burn at the back of her eyes at the thought of him returning to that lonely existence. She wished there was some way…

‘Clara…?

Back in the room he was looking at her with concern.

‘Sorry… just thinking. Shouldn’t do that… very bad,’ she joked.

He moved forward and sat next to her on the bed. ‘I can help with that…’ he said, ‘Lie back.’

Scooting back into the centre of the bed Clara did as instructed and lay amongst the soft covers while he moved next to her, aligning his body with hers, placing his hand on the curve of her waist and angling her to him. On his side he rested his head in one hand and watched her face as he trailed his fingers up her ribcage and gently back down to her hip. Clara closed her eyes as he soothed her and pressed herself more fully against him, moaning slightly when his lips came into contact with hers and he started a slow assault on her mouth.

While still gentle there was more urgency today and more confidence on her part as she snaked her arms around him and let her hand fall to his backside pulling him close enough for her to feel his arousal pressing tight against her belly. She shifted driven by need and felt him buck slightly against her, the rhythm of his kiss increasing and the thrusts of his tongue deepening. Clara rolled him slightly until she could straddle him and kept their kiss intact even as he groaned into her mouth at the pressure her sex exerted on his erection. Instinctively she ground against him, little sparks of pleasure catching her and guiding her movements. At last, eyes shut, she had to break away from his mouth to pant for air, torn between a gasp and biting down on her lip to stifle a cry of need.

With him gripping her hips she felt the last semblance of her control begin to break as her body demanded that she let it dictate its own pace and her movements stuttered as she warred with herself and the frantic speed her desire demanded. She was gasping now, tiny shallow breaths escaping her as she tried to bite down her cries. Clara felt the Doctor slide a hand under her top and brush against her breast and it caused her to throw her head forward with a muffled shout and hide her face behind her hair.

‘Let go, Clara,’ he said softly, one hand coming up to brush away the hair that obscured his view of her. She opened her eyes and saw that his focus was entirely on her although the evidence of his own arousal was clear in the depth of his dilated pupils and flushed cheeks. He still held her tightly and now he pushed down a little on her hips so that she ground deeper into him causing her to jerk and curse into the air. He raised his eyebrows and smiled at her language, apparently forgiving her for it this time around before he angled himself under her again to repeat the action.

‘Doctor…’

‘Control freak….’

She half laughed half moaned at his teasing. ‘I am not…. a… oh… _fuck_ …’

‘Let go…’

She could feel strands of her hair sticking now to her damp face and her breathing was almost painful.

‘Please Clara, let go for me, I’m right here, I’ve got you, now let… go…’

And suddenly it was out of control, the pleasure tipped her forward and the sounds of her orgasm were coming from her mouth before she could stop them. Her hips thrust hard into him and she was dimly aware of his own cursed reply to her hard movements as he encouraged her to take her full need from him, thrusting again and again against him until almost as suddenly as it had begun it ended and her shaking thighs demanded she remove her weight from them. Clara collapsed onto the Doctor’s chest and panted against his shirt.

Gradually the sound of her breathing stilled and was replaced by that of birdsong from outside. The Doctors hand was under her top, centred over her spine, rubbing light circles into her skin and she felt him kiss her hair gently. She shifted a little and heard him take a sharp breath, his hard length still pressed against her as yet unsatisfied. Clara felt a pang of guilt and levered herself up to look down into his eyes. He gazed back at her apparently perfectly contented.

‘Are you done thinking?’ he asked after a beat.

‘Completely done with it, thanks, that anti thinking technique you have seems to work quite well.’

‘Yes, tried and tested,’ he smiled and wriggled under her a little. Clara shot his lower body a look.

‘Um… I think I left you behind in all the excitement,’ she confessed.

He chuckled and ran his fingers through her damp hair, ‘That’s OK, you seemed to be enjoying it.’

‘I could…you know… help you catch up?’ she experimentally ran her fingers down his stomach but he met them with his own at his belt buckle.

‘No,’ he said gently, ‘Not yet…’

Clara widened her eyes, ‘Not yet? Are you sure?’

‘Mm..hmm… the anticipation is half the fun.’

‘It is?’ she said genuinely bewildered, ‘Because from where I am I can say that what I just did was a lot of fun too. Aren’t you ready to pop?’

‘Time Lords don’t ‘pop’’ he said seriously.

‘Well I would have….if you’d told me I couldn’t… well if you’d said ‘not yet’ to me I…. I don’t think I’d have coped actually… I’d have combusted or exploded or…’

He erupted into laughter beside her.

‘You’re so… human…’ he mocked. Clara grabbed a pillow from behind her and belted him across the chest with it.

‘ _What_ did you say?’ She could hear him laughing behind the cushion, ‘What’s wrong with human? You weren’t complaining a minute ago! And anyway it’s your fault! There was I thinking you were old, grey and repressed this time around and instead you turn out to be all sexy and talented and _skilled_ at things!’ His laughter went up a notch and she belted him again until he rolled to the side in an attempt to defend himself. At last she sat back on her heels and surveyed him as he curled in a foetal position shaking with the giggles. She cocked her head and spluttered out her own laugh while for reasons she struggled to pin down her eyes filled with tears.

_This is who he is, who he’s always been, behind the veil._

‘You’ve no idea how good it is to see you like this,’ she commented as he rolled onto his back again and gasped for air.

‘Like what? Abused?’

She laughed again, ‘No, silly… like this….’ She gestured in general towards him.

‘Like what?!’

‘I don’t know, happy… relaxed… the real you…. I can’t think of a term that sums it all up, can you?’

He looked at her for a second and then smiled faintly, a gentle private smile that creased around his eyes and shone from somewhere deep within him.

‘In love?’ he suggested.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

Clara knew two things. That she was running and that she was alone. The silver branches snapped back across her raised arms as she tried to shield her face, and the ground beneath tried to betray her steps as she stumbled through the forest. It was growing darker and behind her she could hear the crash of heavy footsteps in her pursuit and the huff of breath which seemed only to grow closer no matter how fast she tried to escape. There was no path ahead of her only trees and vegetation which tangled in her clothing and scraped the soft bare skin of her calves as she ran. She could feel the tears on her cheeks and the rasp of her own breathing as her chest burned with the effort and her muscles protested. She had to reach the Doctor.

Suddenly ahead of her she spied a light through the trees which offered hope. To either side now she could see nothing but darkness and she dare not look behind so Clara poured her effort again into her tired legs and headed for the light of the sun. It was growing closer now and something told her if she could only escape these trees she would be safe, that the sun would banish whatever lay behind her and prevent any harm. She just had to reach it, feel its light and warmth on her skin.

The branches were becoming thinner and the light brighter and now her arms were raised not against thorns or scratches but against the light itself as it burned hotly into her eyes. She burst from the last of the trees and stumbled forward and as she did so a figure turned to greet her as she fell by its feet. A rush of relief flew through her.

‘Doctor,’ she panted, kneeling in the dark grass, her weight suspended on both arms as she braced herself and tried to catch her breath. He looked down at her briefly, the twin orange suns at his back obscuring her view and she knew that whatever had been chasing her couldn’t touch her now, not with him there, not with that light.

That light.

That light wasn’t coming from the suns.

She lifted her head and saw that he was staring past her at whatever had been following. His face registered recognition and then as she watched the amber light burst from his chest and tore down the length of his arms, his head was thrown back in the agony of regeneration and the scream ripping from his mouth. He was changing, he was dying…

… and then she heard the footsteps begin again behind her.

 

XXXXXXXXXX

_It’s just a dream it’s just a dream it’s just a dream._

Clara repeated her mantra in a vain attempt to calm herself as she sat upright in their shared bed. Beyond the window the twin orange suns burned with the first light of morning and when she closed her eyes she could still see their light, tinted red by her eyelids.

_It’s just a dream it’s just a dream._

She placed a hand on her chest and felt her heartbeat pounding there, tried to steady her breathing, and opened her eyes again.

The Doctor was sleeping, an event so rare that she couldn’t help but feel warmth return and panic subside a little at the sight of him. He lay with his back to the light of the window, one arm across the bed where until moments ago it had been wrapped around her. She watched his face for a moment peaceful and undisturbed before an urge made her lean forward to gently touch his cheek. He was solid under her touch, his skin still alien-cool, and she felt her heartrate drop and calm return to her.

_Just a dream._

If she ever saw one of these dream crabs again she was going to have serious words with it for ruining these first precious days with their brain scramble hangover symptoms. On the other hand she rather hoped she never had to see one of those horrible things again. How long was she going to have these dreams for? Always at the most peaceful moments. Always just when she thought everything was perfect. Always the same theme, his death. Perhaps it was just fear, perhaps it had nothing to do with echoes or visions of the future and everything to do with the fear that she could lose someone she loved. It made sense, she had lost Danny last year and she knew her feelings for him had never reached the intensity of what she felt now for the Doctor. If she lost the Doctor… she couldn’t bring herself to think of it for more than a moment, but she was sure she would never survive it, her need for him was too great now that she had acknowledge it.

_Just a dream. He’s right here._

Clara eased herself back down to lie facing him and let her fingers move through his hair softly. The day stretched out before her unhurried and she indulged herself with the time to form her memory of him sleeping there, to add it to that of last night when he had finally given himself to her. Her smile deepened at the images in her mind and at the memories of his voice against her hair, his breath hot and ragged as he fought his desire for her.

‘Clara, I need…’

‘What do you need, tell me, please tell me, it’s OK…’

They had lain together for hours and Clara had floated on an onslaught of pleasure provided by his touch, his hands slipping between her legs, his mouth drawing intimate patterns on her hot flesh. She had cried out and gripped him to her, her body overcome and her mind losing all semblance of her control under his ministrations. At last she had been lying in his arms, limp with satiation when he had flinched against her and moaned softly into her ear. So far everything he had done had been for her, a slow intense menu of pleasure for her consumption only. She sensed now however his body’s urgency was driving him towards a different goal and she felt a coil of excitement form deep inside her.

‘Tell me what you want,’ she told him quietly, ‘I want to make you feel as good as you’ve made me. Tell me or… let me touch you?’ He buried his face tighter against the crook of her neck and she felt his hips press against her as a reflex. He was hard and the contact made him moan into her skin, small noises of desperate need low in his throat. It was enough to spark her own desire again but he made no move to direct her towards what he wanted. Clara angled her body back a little and ran her hand down the space between them, her fingertips drawing soft lines down his stomach until her wrist brushed the tip of him on its way past. The reaction was electrifying as his hips jerked hard against her and a sharp exclamation came fast from his lips. Clara push down further and made to wrap her hand around him but he stopped her again holding her palm away from him.

‘Doctor…’ she was ready to plead with him if necessary, ‘Stop tormenting yourself, let me do this for you.’

He was clearly struggling with himself but Clara was having difficulty following his reasoning. They had grown utterly comfortable with one another in the days before, close and trusting, and yet he still held out.

‘Clara, I…’

‘What is it?’

She could feel him chewing at his lip beside her cheek. Finally he released her hand and she was about to resume her path when he placed his fingers at her temples. Clara stopped, curious, her mind desperately trying to work out what he needed when she felt it and suddenly understood.

‘I need to be with you,’ he said with some difficulty, ‘Here,’ and he pressed his fingers a little more firmly against her temples, ‘I can’t just…it’s not just the physical side… I need to connect to you.’ There was a soft flutter in her mind as he waited just outside of her consciousness, but even this she could feel was a struggle and she pictured a dam about to break when she gave the word.

_Telepath, he’s a telepath, of course… he needs to be in my mind._

‘Ok,’ she said and adjusted her position so that he could hold her face more easily, ‘Go on…’ she tensed a little in anticipation. She had no idea what it would feel like in such an intimate situation to have him push into her mind that way but his need was coming off him in waves and it was clear now that he _had_ to do this, that intimacy meant intimacy of mind as well as body.

‘You’re sure?’ he was barely containing himself now and struggled to get the words out.

Clara nodded, hoping he wouldn’t pick up too much on her nerves. He pressed his forehead against hers and their noses touched.

‘I don’t want to… frighten you.’

‘You won’t,’ she said firmly, probably too firmly she reflected, because she _was_ nervous and she didn’t know what to expect, but this was the Doctor and he needed her and she wasn’t about to let him down. He delayed a beat longer and then at last something gave way in him and she felt him part her consciousness and push deeply into her mind. Clara gasped and closed her eyes a sudden rush of colour swirling behind them. There was nothing frightening here, only beauty. ‘Oh…’ she breathed. She felt herself floating somehow, the presence of his mind holding her safe. ‘Oh God, that’s…’ she laughed softly, oh god it was wonderful, it was so wonderful. And then she felt him press against her urgently and the soft colours of his mind suddenly became more vibrant, drawing her senses to them and registering a slightly frantic desire.

Connected now he released her temples. He took her hand and placed it at the base of his erection and Clara snapped back into the room, aware of his ongoing exploration of her head but now also aware of the heaviness of his arousal against her palm and the way he was moving unbidden against her. She wrapped her fingers around him and heard him breathe in sharply his breath catching in his throat for a second before he groaned deeply and reached down to hold her to him. Clara opened her eyes and drank in his features as he moved in her grip, his hand over hers, his eyes closed and a sheen of sweat forming on his skin. He was finally letting go and she felt her heart race with excitement, her hand quickening its pace when his hips dictated it. He was panting harshly against her and in her mind she could see the colours churning violently, sense that he was close. His whole body shuddered against her and he began to unravel, unable to keep to a steady rhythm, unable to keep his breathing level, noises of desire tumbling from him alongside her name. She could feel him tipping rapidly over the edge and felt the sudden urge to hold her own breath transfixed by the spectacle as he abruptly bucked forward with a harsh cry and his orgasm tore through him.

His arms reflexively tightened around her and Clara felt the spatter of his semen against her belly before she breathed again, panting almost as hard as he was. She couldn’t hold him tight enough for a moment and brought her lips crashing down on his long enough to claim him as utterly hers, before releasing him to regain his breath. He slipped down her body a little and rested his forehead against her chest, puffs of air tickling her breasts as he recovered, exhausted, drained and as she held, him rapidly tumbling into sleep where he still lay now.

It had been one of the most intense experiences of Clara’s life and as she lay with him peacefully she felt a thrill run through her at the memory. She wanted to do it all over again, she wondered what the day had in store, they were still exploring and learning, they hadn’t even made love and yet she felt like she’d experienced the ultimate in intimacy already. She was still faintly aware of the telepathy between them, the non specific flicker of his mind close by and she wondered if that now they had forged that bond it would stay with them. She tried to tune into it closer but lacked the skills, contenting herself instead with its quiet presence, the reassurance that he was hers. Her nightmare forgotten Clara smiled a wide smile and bent to kiss the Doctor’s cheek.

‘You… are amazing,’ she whispered, ‘I just want you to know that officially.’

He smiled.

‘Wait… you’re awake! How long have you been awake?’

‘Long enough to be aware of you watching me. It’s a bit creepy, Clara.’

‘I am not creepy!’

He chuckled but his eyes remained closed. Clara got down on his level and pressed her nose to his.

‘You can’t blame me for being curious about you sleeping, it’s a rare occurrence,’ she let her fingers trace lines on his neck and shoulder, ‘How was your sleep by the way?’

‘Very pleasant thank you,’

‘Hmm,’ she hummed contentedly and toyed with his hair, ‘How do you feel about breakfast?’

‘In general or specifically today?’

Clara rolled her eyes, ‘Today.’

‘Right now I feel like the kitchen is very far away,’ he rolled slightly onto his back and finally opened his eyes, ‘But for you I will make the perilous journey.’

‘I can do it,’ Clara offered, her limbs suddenly filled with barely supressed energy, ‘I’m more awake than you, you look like you’re still recovering.’ She felt proud and noted his rather self satisfied smirk in response to her. It made her laugh to witness her worn out Time Lord and it made her feel curiously powerful too. ‘You just lie there in the afterglow for a bit longer and I’ll do breakfast,’ she said.

‘Gods,’ he remarked, ‘You’re going to cook?’

‘I like cooking, I can _cook_ , you’re going to have to learn this…’ she hopped off the bed and rummaged on the floor for her discarded robe. ‘What do you fancy?’

He rolled back into his previous position and pulled the covers up over his shoulder before closing his eyes again, ‘Surprise me,’ he replied, ‘Not soufflé.’

‘Soufflé isn’t for breakfast,’ she said sternly, ‘But now you mention it…’

‘No!’ came the muffled instruction.

‘OK OK…’

Clara trotted down the stairs and into the pretty little kitchen area of what she had to remind herself was _their_ cottage. Theirs not his, theirs together. She grinned the painful face splitting grin that had been dogging her for days and happily rifled through cupboards looking for ingredients. She opened the fridge and surveyed the contents.

‘Hmm…’

Plenty of basics but low on the fresh stuff. They had eaten all the fresh stuff over the course of the previous days and neither of them had felt the particular urge to leave the house in search of more. Well she would just have to make that sacrifice, they had to eat, or they’d waste away.

‘Little trip to the TARDIS I think,’ she bounced through into the living room and found her slippers. She glanced at her coat hanging by the door and then down at her flimsy robe. She was finding it hard to fully understand that she and the Doctor were the only people on their little planet and that if she wanted to she could walk naked to the TARDIS to collect breakfast bits without any embarrassment. But old Earth habits died hard, she wouldn’t walk to the corner shop naked and she wouldn’t do that here either. It was bad enough she was doing it in her nightwear but she honestly didn’t think there was much point in getting full dressed. Not with what she had planned for _after_ breakfast, oh no. She giggled and taking the Doctor’s TARDIS key from the little table by the couch swung open the front door.

An angular face of yellow and black gazed back at her through huge multifaceted eyes.

‘Where is the Doctor?’ it buzzed.

Clara squealed and slammed the door shut. ‘Doctor!’ she all but screamed up the stairs, ‘Doctor!’ When he didn’t reply immediately she raced up towards their room, ‘Doctor, there’s a… a wasp thing…’

She froze on the landing where she spotted the Doctor wrapped in his own robe opening widely the large window over the front door. The sunlight poured in casting his shadow long behind him and framing him in amber light. Clara froze, her dream rising in her mind, until he stepped a little to the side and the illusion of regeneration wasn’t quite so compelling. The sounds of nature floated in on a gentle breeze and the images were gone.

Outside the yellow and black creature hovered on a level with the first floor, its long gossamer wings stretched out behind it, beating almost silently to maintain its position. It made a little bow towards the window, folding at its tiny nipped in waist and opening out its spindly arms in a gesture of greeting.

‘Well, well,’ the Doctor said cheerfully, ‘It’s been a long time since I met an Anushri, what brings you to my little planet?’

XXXXXXX

Clara reached across the breakfast table cautiously and pulled her cup and saucer close enough to pour her tea. The Anushri next to her tipped its head and buzzed and warped its strange insectoid face into what she assumed was a smile but really could have been something more threatening. She gave it a hesitant smile back and sipped from her cup, her eyes refusing to be anything but wide. She wondered if she should make small talk, but thankfully the Doctor returned from the TARDIS at that point bringing bacon with him and she had an excuse to dart up and set about making breakfast.

‘Your hospitality is most kind, Doctor, I am deeply honoured to join you in your meal,’ The Anushri said somewhat obsequiesly. Clara unwrapped the bacon and wondered about the dietary requirements of giant wasps. Did they eat bacon? Surely they ate nectar or something?

‘Plenty to go round,’ the Doctor said absently clearly wishing to get to the point, ‘so tell me what brings you here?’

The Anushri took a rather delicate sip of tea through its odd little mouth. The ridges of its gums looked serrated.

‘We were running routine scans of the terraformed planets,’ it said in a somewhat automated fashion, ‘We wish to chart their progress and development. We saw two lifeforms on 183. We have only ever seen one before, yourself. We were concerned.’

‘Concerned?’ the Doctor said lightly, ‘Concerned I had a companion, you know about my companions, I quite often travel alongside someone…’

‘You do not bring them here…’ the Anushri shot a rather odd glance at Clara who glared back at it with some difficulty as she wasn’t sure quite where its pupils were or if indeed it had pupils at all. If she remembered from her GCSE biology flies could see all round the room in a weird kaleidoscope pattern. Even with its back to her it would still be able to see her. Anyway she had decided she didn’t like it. It had interrupted her morning and now it appeared to be sucking up to the Doctor for some reason. This could only end in trouble, aliens dropping by always ended in trouble. This was their private little planet and now it had crashed into their little world with its big buzzing wings and its weird angular face…. She stirred at her tea irritably while the bacon fried.

‘You are very important to the Anushri,’ it was saying and Clara rolled her eyes, ‘We dispatched an envoy immediately to ascertain your safety.’

‘That’s very kind but its many years since I was involved with your species, you don’t need to be perpetually grateful… really.’

‘But we are,’ it said.

‘Well as you can see we’re quite well.’

‘The planet has given you satisfaction?’ the Anushri asked like a salesman asking for feedback.

The Doctor glanced out the window, ‘It is most impressive,’ he conceded. ‘Almost like home.’

‘Our technologies have developed further, you would be very welcome to use our most up to date terraformation technology for your planets benefit. It has particular emphasis on the fauna of other systems, it can replicate very well the DNA of known lifeforms, even those which have been extinct or lost for many thousands of years.’

Clara placed their breakfast before them and watched as the Doctor’s eyes gave away his interest in this new aspect of terraformation. ‘Really?’ he said coolly, ‘It replicates animal life?’

‘Yes,’ the Anushri confirmed. The Doctor looked slightly wistful for a moment and Clara wondered what he was remembering from Gallifrey. He dropped his eyes to his cup and his mouth twitched into a sad smile.

‘I used to have a pet as a boy, a Gallifreyan Maltheus. I’ve been trying for a long time to find something similar but they never have the right temperament.’

‘A what?’ Clara asked, mouth full.

‘Sort of like a dog but with more limbs, forked tail. Very loyal.’

‘Our technology could replicate such a creature,’ the Anushri said confidently.

‘Such things are often best left in the past,’ The Doctor said, ‘There are reasons why things become extinct. He was a lovely animal though,’ he confessed, ‘Missed him terribly when I was sent away to school.’

Clara’s heart swelled suddenly at the image of the little boy who lost his pet, and she would have moved heaven and earth to get him his dog back. She cursed herself for being so soft.

‘Maybe don’t write it off immediately,’ she said and rubbed a spot on his arm.

‘Doctor,’ the Anushri said, straightening in the chair and fluttering its wings importantly,’ We would be honoured if you would join us on the Home Planet for our annual celebration of Liberty from the Thousand Year War.’

‘Ah well I’m not much one for parties…’ he started.

‘Can we see the terraforming stuff?’ Clara said quickly. The Anushri looked at her with barely disguised disinterest, clearly the Doctor was superior to his companion in the eyes of this insect.

‘Yes,’ it said shortly before returning its attention to the Time Lord. ‘Doctor?’

The Doctor looked between the pair of them and the Anushri pushed a little further.

‘You would join us for our firework display and the celebratory meal. There is a dramatic representation of the final moments of battle, in full costume, in which of course… you are portrayed as the hero of the hour.’

Clara sniggered. ‘People dress up and pretend to be the Doctor?’ he shot her a cautionary look but the Anushri was already offended.

‘It is a key part of our culture and has been for many hundreds of years,’ it said tartly.

‘Sorry,’ she said quietly trying not to laugh at the idea of a wasp in a magicians outfit. Of course it probably wouldn’t be the magician’s outfit she was so used to now. She wondered which incarnation of the Doctor saved this species? Maybe the one with the scarf or the one with the question mark jumper? She tried desperately to suppress a laugh as she thought of wasps doing contemporary dance interpretations of war while waving question mark umbrellas.

‘We would be most honoured,’ the Anushri was practically begging now and she could see the Doctor wavering. She had no doubt he was enjoying their romantic getaway but the Doctor was the Doctor and weird civilisations with fancy technology excited him and his curiosity was most definitely peaked. Clara glanced at him and saw that he was poised to ask her if it would be alright. She couldn’t resist him and part of her wanted to get him his dog-thing and, well, this was what she had signed up for and secretly she liked it too. She still didn’t like the wasp but she quite commonly wasn’t a fan of whichever alien it was this week and at least this lot were more concerned with parties and terraforming than wars diseases and other trouble making events. They were weird but they’d managed to stay peaceful thanks to the Doctor so it was all relatively safe.

‘It sounds fascinating,’ she said, ‘We should go, soak up the culture, see the technology.’

The Anushri actually smiled at her, she was certain it was a smile this time and she saw the Doctor do something akin to thanking her with his eyes. ‘You will _both_ be made very welcome,’ the wasp-thing said enthusiastically and Clara raised her eyebrows, ‘Our Leader will be so thrilled. I will go ahead and make good the preparations,’ and it shot up from the table suddenly almost knocking it over in its glee, its four lower limbs dancing in excitement while its wings beat out of time with each other. ‘This will be a celebration to end all celebrations,’ it said happily, bowing and departing the room. Clara heard a crash from the living area as it knocked over nick knacks on the way to the front door.

The Doctor looked at her apologetically, ‘Sorry…’ he started. Clara pressed a firm kiss onto his lips.

‘It’ll be fun,’ she said, ‘You, me, a weird planet full of wasps who think you’re their saviour…’

‘Well I sort of _am_ their saviour, if it wasn’t for me…’ he began.

‘Shut up you egomaniac!’ he laughed at her admonishment, ‘I was saying…. It’ll be nice, our first trip away somewhere as a proper…’ she hesitated…’ well I mean as a… proper couple.’

‘Like a honeymoon,’ he said quickly and Clara blinked.

‘I wasn’t going to go that far…’ she said, something twisting nervously inside her.

‘No?’ he looked at her with his steady blue eyes.

‘No!’ she protested.

‘Oh…. That’s a shame,’ he said thoughtfully, dropping his gaze to their plates as though considering clearing them, ‘Because I would… go that far I mean….’ He squeezed her hand and rose from the table, leaving Clara wide eyed, her breath caught in her throat. The nervous feeling in her stomach exploded into joy.

 


	4. Chapter 4

4

The planet wasn’t quite what Clara expected but then she quite frequently imagined the wrong thing when it came to guessing what aliens’ homes looked like. In her mind’s eye she had pictured some sort of giant dirty wasps nest filled with little hexagonal cubicles but the view in front of her dispelled that image as ridiculous.

The city was stunning, suspended high in the green and silver trees in parts and in others built from a white-grey marble-like stone carved into tall towers. It had something of a fairy-tale about it as the spires rose from cool ponds decorated with lilies and pierced the crystal blue sky above. All around them the Anushri hovered and flew from place to place and she noticed that there didn’t appear to be any method of reaching the top of those spires except for the winged kind. She hoped they had a ground floor room for them.

They had barely stepped out of the TARDIS when their friend from planet 183 appeared by their side.

‘We are honoured to welcome you back, Doctor,’ it buzzed joyfully before casting a cursory glance at Clara, ‘And companion of the Doctor,’ it added reticently. Clara gave it a wide smile and took great pride in clasping the Doctor’s arm. ‘Allow me to show you to your quarters before the evenings celebrations. Our Leader has assigned me the proud task of being your personal aide…’

The Doctor raised his eyebrows, ‘I’m not sure I need a personal aide…’

‘It will be my greatest pleasure to provide for your every need, I will be on hand at all times to give you comfort and sustenance and…’

‘I think we’ll manage,’ Clara said a little curtly. The Anushri rotated its huge eyes towards her and buzzed irritably under its breath.

‘As I was saying,’ it continued, ‘It would give me great pleasure to see to the _Doctor’s_ needs during his stay. My name is Eck.’

‘Eck?’ Clara giggled, ‘As in ‘oh ‘eck,’’ she deepened her northern accent and received a pinch on her arm from the Doctor. Eck contorted its features at her in anger and then apparently made some decision to ignore the trifling companion. It turned its back on her and gestured for the Doctor to follow.

‘If you would…’ it said moving ahead a few paces over a delicate bridge.

‘Clara please stop annoying the locals, they are a very proud species,’ the Doctor said lowly.

‘His name’s Eck,’ she tittered, what kind of name is that?’

‘Clara please!’

‘And he wants to be your personal assistant and tend to your every whim…’ she singsonged playfully.

The Doctor groaned at her side, ‘It’s part of their culture… they are insectoid in nature they live to serve the majority of the time…’

‘You’re loving it,’ she mocked, ‘You’re a total celebrity here. Eck there is falling over himself to bring you whatever you want and later everyone is going to dress up as you and dance. This is going to be so funny.’

‘Clara!’

‘Sorry,’ she swallowed down her giggle.

‘You’re just feeling threatened,’ the Doctor said acidly.

‘What? I don’t think so, how do you get that?’

‘Well let’s face it Clara, _you’ve_ been tending to my every whim recently…’ he trailed off with a knowing smile, ‘Now you have competition.’

‘From a wasp? That’s really disturbing… and wrong when you think about it.’

He patted her arm patronisingly, ‘Don’t worry Clara, you still have top billing.’

‘I am so going to enjoy seeing you mortified later…’ she grumbled, ‘Just wait, they’ll have you signing autographs and all sorts.’

‘You say that like it’s a bad thing…’ he smirked and she rolled her eyes.

‘Ego!’ she warned.

They had reached the far side of the bridge and Eck was hovering impatiently by a wide archway which led into a rounded and steepled building made of the same marble stone as the spires. Across the arch pale blue gossamer fell in light folds and provided some privacy for the occupants. There were tall blue flowers growing on either side of the entrance too, their sweet perfume perfusing the air. Eck gathered some of the gossamer cloth in one strange little claw and pulled it back to reveal their room.

‘We had always hoped you would return,’ he was saying, ‘We long ago prepared your quarters.’ Clara thought this a little odd and raised her eyebrows at the Doctor as Eck began to show them the room’s facilities. ‘We hope it is to your liking,’ he said a little nervously.

‘It’s very…’ the Doctor cast his eyes around the rather opulent suite, ‘Floaty,’ he said. Clara smirked again, floaty did rather sum it up. Above their heads more gossamer was suspended in canopies over the various sections of the suite, it trailed down walls and draped over furniture, it parted to reveal a huge bathtub with silver fittings. The bed itself hung from the ceiling on four silver pleated ropes and was once again covered in gossamer silk. Everything was wonderfully magical and tactile but it did rather look like a bedroom from a fairy princess’s dream.

Eck stood by the entrance apparently awaiting further praise or possibly some orders from his new master.

‘It’s lovely,’ Clara said positively, ‘It’s all very well… put together… very co-ordinated. It has a definite style.’

Eck appeared to appreciate this even if it did come from the companion.

‘We are glad it is to your taste, it was based upon our Leader’s own rooms, the Queen has a wonderful eye for luxury.’ Clara watched as the Doctors jaw twitched in the face of so much frilly indulgence. ‘Will you be needing anything directly? Sustenance? A warm bath perhaps?’

‘No we’re… we’ll give you a shout if we need anything,’ Clara said. Eck turned his attention to the Doctor waiting for his instruction.

‘What she said,’ he said and reluctantly Eck edged backward towards the doorway.

‘I will absent myself then and prepare for the festivities, my costume is waiting and the others will be so excited to hear of your arrival,’ he said. Finally the heavy gossamer fell back over the entrance and they were alone again. The Doctor poked the side of the bed and it swung gently to and fro on its ropes.

‘This is going to be…’ he started.

‘Hilarious?’ said Clara plonking herself on the bed and making it swing violently.

‘I was going to say torture.’

 

XXXXX

 

Several hours later after a painful meet and greet session with the local population of excited Anushri Clara and the Doctor had been seated in an open fronted single tier pagoda painted in silvers and light blue. The floor was covered in deep white cushions and layers of plush and inviting material and between them a low level table offered a bounty of unusual looking fruits and sweetmeats. Clara sat cross legged munching her way through a variety of these while the Doctor reclined next to her, his eyes on the scene below them.

The large ponds had been lit all around by torches and as a result were illuminated bright as day. On the surface of the water a temporary stage had been floated and on this a scene of mountains and valleys had been constructed. The Doctor had just finished explaining that this represented the area of the planet where the final battle of the thousand year war had taken place. Several of the Anushri were starting to take their positions as key figures in the re-enactment and Clara choked on a nectarine style fruit when one appeared dressed as the TARDIS complete with its skinny arms sticking out at all angles. It bumped into one of its colleagues unable to see its way round. The Doctor looked heavenward and sighed.

‘Awful,’ he remarked.

‘Its not _Les Mis_ but give it a chance,’ Clara said.

‘I hate _Les Mis_.’

‘Rule one of dating, you have to at least pretend to like what the girl wants to go and see.’

‘This isn’t a date.’

‘Yes it is,’ she said confidently. She caught his sideways glance at her and smirked. ‘When do you make an appearance then?’ she asked.

‘Soon,’ he groaned.

‘Which version of you?’

He didn’t answer and Clara looked across at him fully noting his discomfort.

‘Are you going to be wearing something silly?’

‘Clara, there were many… anomalies in my previous incarnations….’ He began.

‘You’re going to look ridiculous aren’t you?’

‘I’m not… _they_ are,’ he pointed at the Anushri gathering by the stage, too much shadow still fell on them to see their outfits.

‘Yes but you wore it originally whatever it is and now they are emulating their great hero. It’s OK though…Seriously your sense of style has improved over the centuries.’

‘Thank you,’ he said uncomfortably.

Suddenly a fanfare erupted on the other side of the pond and lights flared. Another pagoda but of greater stature than their own came into view and from where she sat Clara could see a tiny wasp with a crown and a rather larger Anushri making its way up the steps to the seating area. It had small stubby wings and a huge abdomen and on either side several smaller Anushri helped to shove and push it up the steps.

‘What the…?’

‘King and Queen,’ the Doctor said, ‘Their Leaders. She’s full of eggs.’

‘Eww.’ She dropped her squishy fruit back onto her plate and watched.

The Queen was holding onto some of her followers now who were attempting to drag her by the arms to her pile of cushions and blankets. Eventually she dropped to her knees and half flopped half rolled into position. The fanfare sounded again and there was a small cheer as she waved exhausted from her place.

‘For a queen she’s seriously let herself go,’ Clara said.

‘I thought she was looking rather svelte,’ The Doctor commented, ‘You should have seen her grandmother. Oh Gods it’s starting…’

Clara watched him sink back into the cushions and attempt to shrink down out of view.

‘Oi, you’re the special guest,’ Clara said elbowing him, ‘Make yourself seen.’ He rolled his eyes at her and then came a sudden clash of symbols from the stage which pulled her attention away. Two dozen Anushri in costume came running out from either side of the stage, some of them taking off and hovering while others remained below. Armed with something akin to a stick they began a rather formal looking dance which she guessed was meant to represent some sort of fight with swords but really looked like Morris dancing.

‘What’s going on?’ Clara whispered.

The Doctor sighed and sat up a little. ‘The ones in red on the right hand side of the stage represent the Anushri soldiers. The ones in green on the left are their enemy, also Anushri but rebels. At the moment they are enacting the first stages of the final battle.’ They watched as a few red clad Anushri dramatically fell to the ground and twitched. ‘The Anushri soldiers started out pretty badly,’ the Doctor went on tiredly as though he knew what was coming, ‘Their numbers were dwindling….’ More red clad wasps dived off the side of the stage.

‘Where are you?’

‘I haven’t arrived yet.’

‘What’s that?’

‘The enemy victory dance … they got a little carried away.’

Clara watched as the green clad wasps jigged in mid air with a sense of delight. She popped a fruit in her mouth and sucked sticky juice from her fingers noisily. The Doctor cast her a slightly irritated glance.

‘Do you have to do that?’ he asked.

‘What? This?’ Clara sucked another finger a little more slowly. He sighed and looked back at the stage. Another clash of symbols and the green jigging wasps froze suddenly. They all looked skyward in horror before the stage was awash with a peculiar whining noise.

Clara raised her eyebrows, ‘What…?’

‘TARDIS sound effect,’ the Doctor said passing one hand over his forehead, ‘I should arrive… soon.’

Clara bounced on her cushion ‘Can’t wait.’

The Anushri dressed as the TARDIS lumbered out into centre stage, four stick legs protruding from the base of the police box costume, and then thumped down into position. There was a flash of light and another wasp leapt out behind it. In costume.

‘Oh my God!’ Clara exploded next to the Doctor, ‘Oh my God is that supposed to be _you_?’

‘Yes,’ he moaned.

‘What on earth? You look like you’re auditioning for Joseph!’

‘What?’

‘Joseph and the amazing technicolour dreamcoat,’ Clara cackled. ‘Where did you even _get_ that coat?’

‘Clara you’ve seen it before there’s no need to get that excited.’

‘I know I know but it’s different in echoes, I see you but it’s more a sense of you I get than real detail. I mean I know you were this blonde curly haired version but now that I see the coat in the flesh well its… a bit more… more… its brighter than I remember.’

The Doctor covered his eyes.

‘Oh my god its wearing a curly wig too!’ Clara laughed and pointed at the wasp. ‘Oh this is priceless.’

The Doctor Wasp held up its hands dramatically and the other actors fell silent and still.

‘Now what?’ Clara asked.

‘Now I end the war and bring peace to the two sides.’

‘How?’

There was an enormous explosion from the stage and the Doctor Wasp stepped forward and started doing some enthusiastic pointing. It looked like it was directing traffic. Clara frowned.

‘Don’t ask,’ the Doctor said, ‘This isn’t quite the version I remember either.’

The traffic direction seemed to be the cue for fireworks and an enormous display began to fire from the edges of the pond, shooting high into the sky and erupting into a dozen colours before falling reflected in the water. Around the Doctor wasp the wasps of both sides began another dance, linking arms with their enemies and then in a flourish removing the top layer of their costumes to reveal…

‘No! Not more technicolour dreamcoats!’ Clara squealed and started holding her ribs.

‘It’s become a national costume,’ the Doctor said quietly.

‘No way! Oh that’s too funny.’

The tempo increased and the Anushri flew high into the air over the stage where they continued to link arms, pirouette and generally celebrate. The original Doctor wasp could be seen below with versions of the King and Queen receiving some sort of honour. The Leader bowed to it and offered it a round object which the Doctor wasp held over its head like a trophy.

‘My planet,’ the Doctor said. ‘That’s the King giving it to me.’ The lights around the stage flickered and died. ‘Thank the heavens that’s over,’ he said slumping back into the cushions.

‘My hero,’ Clara giggled leaning over him as he tried to remain stony faced. ‘You saved the day,’ she leaned down and placed a kiss on his lips.

‘You taste of mong-bii fruit, and you’re all sticky,’ he batted her hands from his jacket and complained winning him another deeper kiss, ‘Mmmph… Clara… mmm,’ the Doctor relented and wrapped his arms around her pulling her down over his torso and holding her at the small of her back. Clara felt him push gently up with his hips and the first hint of his arousal.

A sharp cough came from behind them and she knew immediately by instinct that it was Eck.

‘Pardon the interruption, Doctor, but the Queen wishes to see you.’ Clara rolled off him and fell into the cushions mildly irked while the Doctor adjusted his clothing. ‘It is a most important matter,’ Eck urged, glaring at the companion who dared keep the Doctor from his Leader.

‘Of course,’ the Doctor said, ‘Lead the way. Come on Clara, time to meet the Queen.’

XXXXXXX

Clara felt a bit sick and she didn’t think it was the mong-bii fruit. They had been led to the Queen’s pagoda by the ever dissatisfied Eck and given two cushions to kneel on before her. Unfortunately from that height Clara was afforded a view of the Queen’s pulsating egg filled abdomen just at her eyeline. Her skin was pulled tight over it to the point that her yellow and black pattern was almost erased and all that could be seen were the enormous gelatinous lumps of ova. The Queen herself had manoeuvred onto her side and propped her angular head on one claw while her drones gathered around her fanning her strained body. Beside her, her tiny husband sat silently, wingless and wearing his little crown. His wife’s large multifaceted eyes flicked slowly from face to face and her free hand traced sensuous patterns on her side.

‘Doctor it is such an honour to meet you, my grandmother spoke so highly of you and my mother always hoped to greet you herself but sadly it was not to be…’ she drew out the last word in a soft buzz and sighed. ‘It is such a lucky coincidence that we were scanning 183 when you were visiting, don’t you think? Such a lucky happy coincidence…’

Clara glanced at the Doctor who frowned a little at the statement but then appeared to let it pass.

‘I hear you are interested in our latest terraformation equipment,’ she said pleasantly, ‘Such innovation, my scientists have moved the technology on so far from that my grandmother rewarded you with. Tell me Doctor would you like to visit our laboratories? I am sure the scientist there will be only too happy to demonstrate what can be done.’

‘That would be a pleasure,’ he conceded.

‘Good,’ she buzzed and shared a glance with a nearby drone, ‘We will arrange such a trip before your departure and of course you are welcome to use any equipment for your pleasure, there are perhaps some embellishments you would like to make to your planet?’

‘Thank you,’ the Doctor said.

‘But first there is one other small matter.’

And that was when Clara’s skin began to prickle in warning. There was nothing obvious about the way the Queen framed her words or the tone she used but alarm bells immediately began to ring in Clara’s head. Perhaps she had developed a six sense when it came to alien requests for aid, some were simple enough to fulfil, others were weighted with danger. Something told her now that whatever the Queen was about to ask for it wouldn’t be a simple collection job from a far away galaxy or time. The Doctor’s eyes gave none of his thoughts away, she noticed, he merely regarded the Queen with uncommitted curiosity as he waited to hear the scenario.

‘As you are aware we are a peaceful world now,’ she said, ‘Peaceful, prosperous, advanced in our thinking and technology though of course… not as advanced as you, Time Lord.’

Clara fought her irritation. What did this oversized grub want?

‘But recently something has emerged in our world of which we have limited understanding.’

‘Oh?’ the Doctor said.

_Damn him he’s getting interested. Something they don’t understand. Something he probably does. He loves that sort of thing. Opportunity to be clever…_

‘Yes,’ the Queen replied, ‘You have knowledge I hear of something referred to as a dimensional rift?’

The Doctor raised an eyebrow and Clara saw something in his eyes that told her he was lost to whatever mission this turned out to be. She groaned inwardly.

‘I’ve come across a few, yes.’

‘Closed them?’

‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘Where I can. Tends to be a good idea to or things get a bit messy.’

‘One has opened in our world nearby, it is as yet stable, my scientists tell me, but we do not have the means to close it and fear what will happen if it is left to develop further.’

‘It’ll probably suck your entire world into it and destroy it,’ the Doctor said.

Beside her Eck swallowed audibly. Clara looked up at him and suddenly felt a little sorry for him, he’d obviously been sent as an envoy to retrieve the Doctor and she didn’t like to imagine what sort of trouble he’d have been in if he’d come home empty handed.

‘We would be so grateful if you could assess the rift,’ the Queen said.

The Doctor was already pushing himself up from his cushion, ‘Come on then no time like the present.’

Clara staggered up onto her feet, ‘It’s the middle of the night,’ she hissed.

‘It’s not that late,’

‘It is! Can’t this wait?’ her anxiety pushed her to argue, she just didn’t like this not to mention an expedition with a bunch of drones was not how she had pictured her evening ending when she had been reclining in the pagoda with the Doctor.

‘It won’t take long Clara and then I promise it’ll be bedtime,’

Clara rolled her eyes, ‘I’m not tired,’ she said meaningfully.

‘Well then you won’t mind an evening stroll.’

Some mild consternation from the drones around the Queen morphed into something like efficiency as Eck was pushed forward and encouraged to lead the way. Several drones flanked the Doctor and Clara as they moved down the steps and away from the recumbent Queen.

‘Thank you, Doctor,’ she was calling, ‘I would join you but…’ her voice faded as they moved leaving her alone and stranded in the pagoda with her pointless beau.

Clara stomped down the steps as the Doctor fiddled with his sonic settings.

‘You just can’t resist can you?’ she moaned.

‘Hmm?’

‘A nice trip away to soak up some wasp culture and it turns out they’ve got a bloody great rift they want fixed and instead of saying no or at least delaying until a more sociable hour you can’t resist going and looking, _now_ , in the middle of the night.’

‘It’s not that late,’ he said absently twiddling the screwdriver.

‘You are never going to learn that these things don’t end well, _ever_.’

‘It’ll be fine,’ he said, ‘Why are you so anxious? We do this sort of thing all the time.’

Clara opened her mouth to reply and then clamped it shut again. He was right, they did do this all the time, she just didn’t usually have such a sense of unease about it.

 

The location of the rift was on the far side of the city somewhere near the outskirts of the forest from which many of its buildings were suspended. It wasn’t far by foot but it was dark in this quarter and Clara noticed a distinct drop in the temperature too from the brightly lit area where they were housed near the Queen. As they made their way through the ill defined walkways and paths Clara was aware of Anushri hovering just out of view in the gloom around them and of whispered exchanges and the glint of eyes. The atmosphere was dark in more ways than one. Clara moved instinctively closer to the Doctor and was relieved when his arm wrapped around her waist.

‘Not quite as welcoming here is it,’ he breathed.

‘No, I’d go as far as creepy.’

‘There has always been quite a split between the well to do and the lesser Anushri,’ he explained, ‘It’s a very typical hierarchical system. Think about it terms of earth’s insects. A queen at the top, a male to fertilise her eggs, a few choice drones or junior queens around her and below them soldiers, workers, most of which never see the queen as long as they live but work blindly for the hive.’ He gestured into the trees around them, ‘This is where that population lives, no ivory spires here, no floaty gossamer either… just hard work and no real reward.’

Clara cast her eyes around the darkness above her straining to make out little wooden shacks in the trees and the very occasional dimly burning candle. ‘No celebration for them tonight,’ she said and pulled her jacket closer around her. It looked like a fairly miserable existence and despite her earlier entertainment Clara was beginning to feel a bit wretched for the majority of the Anushri population.

The pair and their escort left the shacks behind and began to move through a part of the forest less well mapped and with little guidance in the form of a path. The trees became denser, their colour less vivid and each movement resulted in a dry crackle from underfoot. The Anushri on either side of them tramped ahead to clear the way, breaking back branches and stamping on undergrowth, while Eck dropped back and followed at a few paces distance. Clara was forced to peer down at her feet and carefully navigate a mixture of rocks and vegetation, all the while grateful for the Doctor’s presence and remarkable agility.

‘How come you have no issue keeping balance?’ she asked.

‘Time Lord,’ he said.

‘That’s your answer for everything isn’t it,’ she stumbled against him, ‘’Time Lord’, superior.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

Clara tripped again and he caught her before she crashed onto her knees, ‘Fair enough,’ she grumbled.

‘Ah…’ he said suddenly, causing her to look up swiftly. ‘I think I see our rift.’

Clara felt a sudden wave of panic running through her.

The silver trees were thick in front of them still but the darkness had been pierced by the light of the huge rift. It ran several metres across, edges jagged, and pulsed softly into the night air. As the Anushri came to a halt around them she became aware of a low hum emanating from the depths of it that followed the beat of its pulsing light like a heartbeat. The Doctor stepped forward for a better look and Clara felt his arm come away from her body with a sensation of painful loss that chilled her. She watched as he moved towards it, silhouetted now, one hand reaching closer to feel the heat of the thing that she could feel even from where she stood feet behind him. He withdrew the sonic and did a preliminary scan, a familiar enough action but one that made Clara tense with fear at the results.

The Anushri were chattering lowly in their own language and the clicks rattles and buzzes grated on Clara’s ears. He was still scanning and analysing and it was taking too long for her. She could feel terror rising inside her and a compulsion to move forward and drag him away if necessary. After reading the sonic he pocketed it and again he raised his hand to the rift and watched as the light flickered close to his palm. He pulled back, fingers to his lips, one hand in his pocket, thoughtful.

‘Doctor,’ Clara said, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘Doctor, I think you should come away from it.’

He turned slightly so that he almost faced her and she saw the rifts light reflect in his eyes.

Amber. Orange. Gold.

‘It’s perfectly stable right now, Clara,’

‘I mean it, come away.’ There was an edge of hysteria in her tone that attracted his notice. He frowned at her and turned to face her fully, his features immediately obscured by the contrast between forest darkness and the rifts burning light behind him.

‘Clara what’s wrong?’

‘I just don’t want you getting too close to that thing… not until you’ve figured it out.’

_Not ever. I don’t want you near it ever. And I don’t really understand why._

To her relief he stepped forward and took her hands, staring down at her, puzzled. She became aware of his mind for the first time since that morning brushing over the surface of her consciousness and trying to understand. It felt soothing, cooling even as she looked past him at the orange rift. She wanted to fall into his arms and join with him deeply again, the need washing over her suddenly and completely so that she let out a tiny moan and tried to push with her own unskilled brain to be with him. The Doctor flicked his eyes behind her to the waiting Anushri and withdrew slightly from her mind with a hint of apology.

‘As I was saying, it seems stable enough,’ he addressed the waiting wasps, ‘But I’ll need to get a few things prepared before we can close it down. Should be straightforward but better tackled in daylight.’

A murmur of gratitude from the group and they turned to escort the Doctor back to the city. He wrapped his arm around Clara again and held her against him.

‘What was that all about?’ he asked.

She said nothing for a moment and then felt him hover outside her mind again. He was going to find out, deliberately or by accident he would stumble across her thoughts at some point. She sighed, she suspected that while it could be a wonderful gift, telepathy could put a strain on a relationship. But then hadn’t they lied to each other often enough?

‘Dreams,’ she said eventually, ‘I had more of those dreams.’

‘Which dreams?’

‘Bad dreams, since the dream crabs.’

‘I did wonder,’ he said, ‘You’ve been giving off a certain vibe…’

She shot him a look.

‘I’m not prying Clara, I wouldn’t look without your permission… but your brain should be settling down by now?’

‘Yes well it isn’t,’ she said irritably, ‘I keep getting them, all different, but all the same.’ From the time she had revealed her very first post crab bad dream to him in the TARDIS she had evaded the finer points and intricacies and she hoped she could continue to do so. But he wasn’t having it now that he was curious.

‘The same how? Clara I can sense the general nightmarishness of them but you need to give me some details.’ That brush against her mind again and the yearning to let him in. Finer details couldn’t be avoided.

Clara looked back over her shoulder at the retreating light of the rift and he caught the direction of her gaze.

‘The rift?’ he asked curiously. ‘Really? Now that _is_ interesting.’

‘No… I’m not sure… not specifically the rift I don’t recognise that. But the colours, the light, the heat…. You…’

‘Me?’

‘You. And…. What happens to you,’ she tried to laugh it off, ‘OK tell me it’s just a dream, tell me I still have crab scramble.’

He said nothing and she was forced to listen to the sound of their footsteps through the undergrowth.

‘I have crab scramble still, right?’ she said again.

‘Probably,’ he said. ‘Clara what happens to me?’

She didn’t answer.

‘Clara?’

‘You regenerate,’ she said. ‘All different circumstances, all different places, times, different events, triggers, but you always regenerate.’

‘Oh,’ he said, without a hint of surprise. Clara waited impatiently for something more. Finally he pulled her close and kissed the top of her head gently as they walked.

‘You’re not planning to, are you?’ she asked nervously, ‘Regenerate?’

He laughed softly, ‘No, I’m not planning to.’

‘Then why aren’t you worried?’

‘It’s just a dream Clara, an intense emotional dream, but a dream. Its symbolic, that’s all. You said yourself its different circumstances each time, now that doesn’t sound like its predicting the future with much accuracy does it? I’ve said it before… Not every dream is an echo, not every dream is a premonition.’

‘Quite a lot of mine are, though,’ she said defensively.

‘A lot of yours come from the past. Clara you’ve been through hell this year, your brain has to process it somehow.’

‘Well why is it processing _that_? It was Danny who died not you.’

‘Because you’re afraid,’ he said.

‘I am not afraid! I refuse to be afraid.’ He chuckled at her nervous courage.

‘Do you know how many times I dreamt of you, Clara?’ he said quietly, ‘Do you know how many times I held you in my arms, how many times you died? How many times I tried to save you? And not because you were actually dying but because I was afraid.’

‘You were afraid of losing me is that what you’re saying? You think… That maybe I’m just afraid of losing you?’

‘No I wasn’t afraid if losing you, as far as I knew you were already lost to me.’

‘Then what? Regret? Guilt?’

‘You dreams are often your minds way of forcing you to confront things,’ he said, ‘For me it was how much I needed you, when I accepted that, and came back for you, the dreams stopped. I was afraid of needing you, Clara, and what that meant. On so many levels it would have been easier to lose you and remain in denial, than accept what I actually felt for you.’

Clara felt him squeeze her tighter and a warm stillness drape itself over her panic. But the feeling didn’t fade completely.

‘Maybe…’ she said, her eyes on the road ahead as they approached their room. ‘But I still don’t like the idea of you messing with that rift. It’s something to do with the colour, the light from it…’ she trailed into thought and he roundly hauled her back.

‘Well that’s not until tomorrow… indulge me for tonight, let me test my theory,’ the Doctor said his fingertips running gently down her ribs, ‘The Mystery of Clara’s Dreams demands to be solved before the Anushri Dimensional Rift and Clara Oswald will always be my top priority, every dream I had when we were apart taught me that.’

They stopped outside the gossamer drapes that led to their private quarters and he kissed her again on her temple and smiled down at her.

‘Give me the chance, Clara, give yourself over to me, let me show you that I’m not going anywhere without you, let yourself need me the way I need you, and see if I can’t make those dreams go away…’

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

 

 

She wanted to believe him, to be caught up in the romance and the gentle attention his hands paid her body so that the rift and her nightmares and that flutter of panic that had been with her all night would dispel and vanish entirely. She wanted it so badly she could weep and she wished fervently she hadn’t agreed to, indeed insisted on this little trip at all. It had cast doubt into her mind. The nightmares could be banished by the Doctor’s presence in their secluded cottage, here there were mysteries and aliens and danger that made nightmares seem more real.

Even if everything turned out to be alright and she was she suspected merely afraid of possibilities rather than of actualities, she wished none of it had happened and they were still safely tucked up in their bedroom away from alien wasps and rips in dimensions.

Clara perched on the suspended bed with an uncharacteristic slump to her shoulders. She thought of what he had said about need and wondered if he was right, if her subconscious betrayed her innermost fears. She had loved Danny but she had never needed him the way she knew she needed the Doctor. Need was a powerful and terrifying feeling and one that as a control freak she struggled with. If she could give into that feeling she would be vulnerable.

But he _would_ catch her.

The Doctor regarded her from the opposite side of the room, slowly removing his jacket and flicking open the cuffs of his shirt.

‘Stop it,’ he said.

‘Sorry.’

‘I can feel it from here,’ he went on, ‘Churning about in your head. It’s making me queasy.’

Clara sighed and if possible looked more dejected. The Doctor crossed the floor and sat at her side.

‘Everything really is alright,’ he said.

‘Something bad might happen,’ she said vaguely, irritated with herself.

He smiled in a rather benevolent and indulgent way. ‘Something bad quite often happens and we usually manage, what’s changed?’

‘We have,’ she said.

He pulled her towards him. ‘Clara, Clara, Clara, stop thinking.’ He pressed his lips to her hair and then her temple before they fell to her cheek and his arm slipped around her waist. Clara felt his breath at her ear and on instinct nuzzled against him. ‘Good girl,’ he whispered and laid her down onto the bed gently, moving up beside her as she wriggled closer to him and tangled her hands in his waistcoat. He raised one hand to her temple and looked down into her eyes.

‘With your permission,’ he said, ‘Let’s do this properly… from the start.’ Clara blinked her consent and closed her eyes again as he leaned his forehead against hers and the colours of his mind which had faded almost completely since the morning became stronger behind her eyelids. She inhaled sharply and let out a little gasp of pure pleasure at his presence suddenly feeling safer and more certain than she had all day. At once there was nothing to worry about any more, there was only the feel of him cradling her mind and touching her body. She felt him pull back and looked up at him, smiling.

‘Better?’ he asked.

‘Mmm hmm,’

‘Good,’ he breathed, the need for words leaving them both. He kissed her then, slow and deep and after a moment she was hungry for more, she pushed deeper into his mouth but he was ahead of her and she quickly understood that he had read her need before she had been fully aware of it herself. His movements became more attuned to her, more instinctive and Clara found herself offering up images of what she desired which moments later became reality. After a few minutes he released her from his kiss.

‘Wow,’ Clara breathed. He smiled back. ‘Is there any way I can do that for you? Or is it a superior Time Lord only technique.’ The Doctor laughed.

‘You could probably grasps the basics,’ he said, ‘If I showed you and provided the link.’

‘Show me then,’ she said eagerly.

He leaned down to kiss her again and this time she felt him push forward further into her mind, somehow looping himself around her consciousness before dragging her back with him, through a haze of colour to somewhere deep and private. Clara felt a slight tugging at the edges of her thoughts and after a second forced herself to relax into this warm and cloistered place. The moment she did she felt it, saw it, the way he saw her, the way she felt under his hands, the places he wanted to touch and then the ache in his own body where he longed for her hands, her lips. Clara broke their kiss and leaned back to look into his eyes, she knew what he wanted and the shy expression on his face confirmed what she had seen but he had been too uncertain to ask for.

‘We don’t have to…’ he started.

‘Shh…’

‘We can take as long as we need…’

But Clara had seen the images in his mind and felt the burn of his desire as though it was running through her own body. He wanted her, a complete want born of their psychic connection and the tantalisingly slow progress they had made with each other physically. Since he had allowed her to pleasure him last night a line had been crossed and now he ached to be with her totally, struggled to rein in his fantasies or dampen his arousal and when she felt that in him she felt it in herself too.

‘This is going to be pretty mind blowing isn’t it?’ Clara said.

‘How to put pressure on a man…’

She chuckled, ‘No... I mean the whole telepathy Time Lord thing, it’s not going to be like anything I’ve known is it?’

‘No, it isn’t, but it’s not going to be too weird either,’ he promised.

‘Anything I should know?’

‘You make is sound so clinical.’

‘Just being prepared.’

He sighed as he leaned over her, ‘Clara, shut up,’

‘You’re so romantic,’

‘You’re so nervous,’ he corrected and she dropped her eyes in embarrassment before he kissed her softly again. ‘Stop worrying, stop thinking. Follow the connection we have, it’ll guide you, it’ll grow stronger as we go on….’

‘Stronger than last night you mean?’

‘Much… last night was a bit… one sided…. Tonight will involve both of us. Now…’ he pushed her hair back from her forehead and let his fingers trail through it, ‘Quiet…’

Clara nodded and let her eyes slide shut while her gaze lingered on his. She felt herself fall further into his mind and the edges of his consciousness and hers became blurred, softly folding over one another in slow pastel shades as he bent to kiss her again. Unhurried and guided by the desire of the other they unfastened clothing and allowed skin to find skin, palms tracing the contours of each other’s bodies in long swathes, the warmth and friction sending shivers of need deep inside them.

She recognised the change in tone from pale to vibrant as the Doctor’s breathing picked up and he hardened against her belly but this time it was more deeply connected with her own pleasure than before as he coaxed her along with him with the skilled touch of his fingers. He drew curves on the flesh of her stomach and pushed down between her thighs to meet with her most sensitive areas, and as he touched her Clara saw a flare of desire go off deep in his mind at the sensation of her wetness and heat. He groaned against her neck and mapped circles between her thighs, his fingers slipping into her as she angled her hips to his touch.

Hungrily Clara ran her hands down the muscles of his back and onto his hips, holding him as she tried to grind up and guide him to where she needed. She was aware of his mind watching her thoughts and fired images of them joined at him but he was deliberately holding off, his thoughts and their colours dancing playfully away from her as her untrained mind tried to grasp them. She pushed down hard on his fingers and ached for him to be deep inside of her but again he teased her, acknowledging her desires but replacing her images with his own, holding the sensation of her aching body alongside him as he pulled back from her and slid down her stomach.

She realised what he was doing a moment before he made the move and Clara’s head spun with sudden sharp desire and excitement. It shot through her body and mind making him gasp and moan even as he reached his goal and dipped his mouth between her legs. His pleasure washed through their joined consciousness and dispelled any of Clara’s doubts in a moment. He worshipped her and buried his face against her skin with a thrill that ran directly though him and made him ache with arousal. His movements were steady, the pressure just so, guided precisely by what she needed so that each beat of his tongue against her was perfect in its execution and she felt her orgasm growing closer with such speed that she barely felt able to contain it. But just as she felt she was about to tip off the edge he leaned back at the precise point of no return and kissed a soothing trail of kisses on her thighs. Clara shook with need and whimpered as he massaged her muscles, pulling himself back up over her body and brushing against her at her aching centre with his length.

Now she was pleading with him, in her mind and with her lips, whispered pleas to take her, have her, be with her, now. She ran her hands through his hair desperately and kissed him deeply, pushing hard with her tongue and devouring him as her hands moved to touch him and he bucked hard against her, almost entering her but holding back. She needed him urgently and watched as the colours shared between them began a frantic dance that churned and reared until finally his resolve broke, a torrent of energy pouring from him into her mind as he pushed forward with his hips and entered her.

The sound that tore from her lips no longer represented words as she screamed her pleasure with an abandon she had never felt before. The body and mind of both were joined and yet she felt other worldly, as though her simple human body was not designed for such sensations and that she was feeling through him somehow. They were spiralling rapidly towards a shared climax with every thrust timed directly from their arousal, perfect synchronicity without effort causing them to hit each other’s sweet spots without intention, only instinct.

Clara couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, her body contracting in the first wave of her release when she felt an explosion of colour and sound and felt the Doctor’s orgasm push through her body seconds before her own, layering over her climax and rushing across her mind, a unique and yet shared experience. She dug down into his shoulders with her nails and arched under him only driving him deeper, her movements wild and uncontrolled as she heard the air leave his lungs in the form of a shout. He was as unrestrained as she, free and uninhibited and utterly at one with her.

After breathless minutes Clara found herself floating gently in a sea of his consciousness, his soft thoughts lapping at the edges of her mind. He moved slightly as though to pull away, pull out of her but she held him still for a moment longer, her eyes closed, savouring the unbelievable closeness. She had to press her lips together in an attempt not to cry but he quickly detected the tiny movement and softly kissed her, parting those lips with his tongue and releasing the emotion. Clara let the tears roll unchecked down her face as he held her and felt whole.

And then something filtered through her haze of feeling. At first she thought it was a reflection from his mind, a swirl of colour as his breathing settled and his body relaxed. Then with a frown she saw it brighten, so bright she almost didn’t want to look. She frowned against the heat and light.

‘Clara, open your eyes…’

‘What is that?’

‘Open them…’

Her eyelids fluttered and she held the back of one hand over her face, squinting past it for a second until the brilliance of the light faded a little and she saw its source. Her initial reaction was fear but as soon as it came it was taken by him, absorbed by their connection and reshaped into an equally recognisable sentiment. Hesitantly Clara reached forward and touched his face, her fingertips finding warmth in his skin, her eyes wide with something like joy.

‘Your face… all of you…’ she breathed, her eyes moving across him, to the lengths of his arms, his chest.

‘Does it look anything like your dream?’ he asked quietly and she nodded, fresh tears spilling from her born of relief. And it was, very like it, the light, the colour of this beautiful intimate moment.

‘Yes… it’s just like my dream… what is it?’

‘Life force,’ he explained, ‘It makes sense when you think about it, this is an act of procreation, what you saw in your dreams was regeneration, but it’s all bound up in the part of me that gives life.’

‘Makes sense,’ she agreed distantly, captivated still, ‘Does it happen all the time?’ she asked, ‘I mean every time you… do this…?’

‘Not every time, no,’ he admitted.

‘So this was… special?’ she asked.

‘Oh Clara, do you really need me to say it after everything we’ve just shared?’ he asked kindly.

‘Call it a primitive human trait,’ she said through a smile, ‘telepathy’s great but I want to hear the words.’

‘I love you, Clara Oswald.’

His lips twitched into the shy smile she had grown to know as one her used only for her and he held her gaze steady as he spoke, the words confirming to her what she had long suspected; that she needed him utterly, that he had been right about her fear, that the moment she let go of it he would catch her. It was all just as it should be. He was as much hers as she his.

Clara touched the Doctor’s face softly, and the light which shone from it shone amber-gold.

XXXXXXXXXX

‘Clara,’ his voice filtered through the haze of late morning sleep and tugged at her. ‘ _Clara_ …’

‘Mmmph… I’m awake…’

‘Looks like it,’ he said.

‘Am…’ Clara rolled onto her back and reluctantly opened her eyes. Above her the gossamer floated from the suspended bed canopy like cloud. She stretched luxuriantly and made a little moan of contentment. ‘Why do I need to be awake?’ she asked.

She heard his laugh across the room, ‘Well you don’t _have_ to be but it is almost noon and some of us have things to do…’

An image of the rift flickered through Clara’s mind and along with it pictures of some sort of device with a flashing light on top. Clara frowned.

_What the..?_

A chuckle.

‘What are you laughing at?’ she asked pushing herself up and locating him. The Doctor was by the gossamer covered doorway buttoning his waistcoat and fiddling with his cuffs. Evidently he wasn’t up that long himself and Clara felt a note of smugness wash through her. He glanced up at her somewhat abashed even as the thoughts entered her mind.

‘Yes, alright, I needed a little recovery time too,’ he admitted with the faintest blush. ‘But we really should get moving.’

Clara grinned in self-satisfaction and then felt a stab in her guts. ‘Ow! What..?’

His lips twitched.

‘Feeling something?’ he asked casually.

Clara looked down at her belly and then across at him.

‘Wait a minute,’ she said, ‘This is a telepathy thing isn’t it? Are you…’ her eyes widened in recognition of the strange dissociated sensation in her stomach, ‘Are you hungry?’

‘Starving.’

‘And what are those flashing devices?’

‘Transmuters… for closing the rift… I’ve been lying in bed making plans while you slept.’

‘I’m not sure I like this,’ Clara said doubtfully.

‘You’ll get used to it.’

‘Is it permanent?’

‘Well that depends.’

‘On?’

‘On how often we… well on how much we work on our link,’ he said choosing his words carefully. ‘Last night was very intense, I’m not surprised you have a psychic hangover.’

‘A psychic hangover?’

‘Yes it’s the nearest approximation I can think of. We rather overindulged ourselves and now our minds are a little more tied together and reactive than before. It’ll wear off over the course of the day… maybe a few days.’

‘And in the meantime I have to put up with your hunger pangs?’

‘Well not if you get up and come with me for breakfast, no,’ he teased.

Clara swung her legs out of the bed and then stopped suddenly. ‘Wait a minute if I can feel your hunger what other bodily functions can I feel?’

‘Lots of things…’ he said vaguely.

‘Lots of potentially icky things because there are some things I don’t want to share with you.’

‘Clara you’ll learn to screen things out its just all a bit fresh for you now. You’ll become accustomed, I promise. And if you don’t we can rein it in a bit next time,’ he dropped his voice, ‘Not go so wild…’

Clara glanced up at him as images of last night’s lovemaking flitted through both their minds. ‘No it’s OK I’ll learn to live with it,’ she said quickly. He stomach stabbed at her again. ‘Alright I’m getting up,’ she grumbled at him. ‘This is seriously weird.’

‘You think you have it bad, I’ve been privy to your dreams for the last two hours…’

Clara was pulling on her top but stopped as the words left his mouth and turned to him with a worried expression. ‘And..?’ she asked hesitantly. He approached her and placed his hands on her arms, taking in her face and her nervous expression.

‘Something to do with rabbits made of marshmallows,’ he said, ‘Which if you ask me is fairly nightmarish in itself but I suspect not the kind of nightmare you were worried about, hmm?’

Clara let out a sigh of relief and carried on getting dressed, her heart a good deal lighter than it had been in days. The dreams were over.

XXXXXXXXXX

She could sense that the Doctor’s patience was starting to wear a little thin with the gang of over enthusiastic Anushri who were currently following them down to the site of the rift. It was a case of not only her new psychic abilities but of her rather more honed ability to read his eyebrows, although she did have to stifle a laugh when an image of Eck drowning in a giant pot of jam floated across her mind. Still Clara had been reassured that not long now and they would be departing the planet of the wasps for home again and she couldn’t wait to ditch the life of the semi celebrity and return to their cottage.

After breakfast, waited upon by Eck and several of his contemporaries, they had retreated to the TARDIS for an hour or so to pick up the flashing devices the Doctor had been thinking of and allow him to tinker with their settings. Clara perched in his leather chair while on the lower deck he sonic’d the transmuters into order. A litany of calculations and diagrams ran through her mind throughout the time he was down there and she had to admit it was more than slightly irritating to have to be bombarded with physics when she didn’t understand a word or number of it.

‘Can you please stop thinking so loudly,’ she called down to him, ‘If I see one more equation I’m going to start reading Emily Dickinson or Wuthering Heights, or something _soppy_.’

‘That won’t work Clara, I can easily block out your thoughts.’

‘Well I can’t block out yours so have some consideration.’

‘Why don’t you try to?’ he suggested coming up to the middle deck with a bunch of wires in one hand, ‘Try it, build a wall in your mind against me.’

‘A wall…?’

‘Yes a wall… a literal wall if you like made of imaginary bricks, or one made of music, or poetry or whatever you fancy.’

Clara closed her eyes and started placing imaginary stones on top of one another, picturing the Doctor standing behind them at his blackboard doing sums. She had just about reached his knees when the whole thing disintegrated and a giant equation burst through. She huffed and opened her eyes again.

‘Takes a bit of practice,’ he said, retreating back downstairs, ‘You can do it.’

‘It’s hard,’ she moaned.

‘It’s harder just now because I’m concentrating, it’ll ease off.’

‘Are you going to get your dog thing?’ she asked trying to change the subject and reduce the intensity of the sums.

‘The Maltheus?’

‘Yes the dog with the forked tail.’

‘I don’t know, it’s tempting.’

‘I think a pet would be nice,’ she mused, ‘We could take it on walks.’ She had a sudden image of a six legged red furred dog running through the meadow on their little planet.

‘No Clara, it doesn’t look like that,’ and he fired back an image of what she assumed was his pet.

‘Oh it’s quite sweet!’ she exclaimed suddenly. The Gallifreyan Maltheus had eight legs and a long forked tail which curled over its back. Its dark coat looked harsh but the Doctor’s memory assured her that it was surprisingly soft. It shook its floppy ears and she giggled. The animals wide purple eyes looked up at her with absolute adoration and she could feel the sensation of its cold wet nose nuzzling her hand.

‘What was his name?’ she asked.

A Gallifreyan symbol sprang into her mind all strange circles and lines.

‘Hmm that doesn’t help,’ I’m going to refer to him as Fido.’

She could almost hear him roll his eyes on the deck beneath her.

‘I think you should get one,’ she said.

‘Clara we don’t know how well this technology works, it could create some sort of genetically miscalculated monster.’

‘Or it could bring your pet back to life.’

She felt a sadness settle over him as he worked. ‘You can never replace what’s lost forever, Clara,’ he said, ‘Nothing will ever come close to the original.’ She felt a bit guilty at that and took herself down the steps to where he was working, a box full of fully tuned transmuters to his right.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean bring it back to life I just meant get one like it… you said yourself you’ve been looking.’

The Doctor aimed the sonic at the last transmuter and zapped it into the correct setting. He dumped it in the box and looked up at her.

‘I’ll see what they have to offer but I’m not making any promises,’ he said.

As it happened the chief scientist had decided to join them for the rift closing and it gave the Doctor the opportunity to thoroughly question him about the ethics behind his technology and his success rate in recreating extinct creatures. The rules appeared to be fairly stringent and several layers of applications had to be made to the ethics committee of the Anushri before anything could be sanctioned. On their various terraformed planets however they had re-established large groups of previously extinct animals from other galaxies in well balanced and suitable ecological systems. There was even a version of Earth being developed on which Clara learned such wonders as the dodo and various whales, big cats and fish were being reborn. The emphasis was on extinction brought about by the destructive behaviour of other species such as humans as opposed to that which might be termed Darwinistic selection.

The Doctor was somewhat impressed she could tell. As they walked she could feel a little hum of excitement in his mind and Fido’s image appeared more and more often, with little snippets of his interactions with him as a boy which reminded her of very ordinary human childhoods. Throwing a stick or a ball, playing chase, reading a book by candlelight with his pet curled by his side.

He absolutely had to get one, she decided. She caught his eye and stared at him meaningfully even though she suspected he could very well read the big neon sign in her consciousness that said ‘Get a Fido.’

He was toying with the idea but after a few more minutes Clara couldn’t stand it.

‘So if someone had a specific type of animal they wanted to create…’ she started not very subtly.

‘First it would need to be in our database,’ said the Anushri.

‘Ah,’ the Doctor said, ‘Probably isn’t, very old, very extinct.’

‘Our database goes back many billions of years,’ the scientist Anushri said rather proudly, ‘Billions of years and hundreds of thousands of planetary systems.’

‘Really?’ the Doctor raised his eyebrows. ‘Well you see the planet this creature is from has sort of gone missing.’

‘The planet being…?’

‘Gallifrey,’ Clara said, ‘Have you got creatures from Gallifrey? A Maltheus?’

‘I would need to check,’ the Anushri said. ‘But I would be glad to help if it is something you desire, Doctor?’ Clara felt the Doctor’s hearts battle between hope and disappointment and suddenly felt very protective of him.

_They’d better have a bloody eight legged dog._

They reached the rift and the Anushri escort along with the several dozen others who had come along just as spectators stepped back to allow the Doctor room to work. An excited chatter and buzz went around the crowd as Eck deposited the box of transmuters on the ground and the Doctor began another scan of the dimensional rift.

‘Need me to do anything?’ Clara asked hovering by the box.

‘You can start taking the transmuters and place them along the edge of the rift, about a metre apart on the ground. It’s still pretty stable, this shouldn’t take long, I’m just running a few tests to see where its coming from first, don’t want it popping up elsewhere. Hopefully then it’ll just be a case of activating the devices, reversing the polarity of the tear and sealing it from this side.’

Clara knelt down and took a flashing thing from the box, rotating it in her hands and eyeballing it curiously. She really didn’t understand any of this stuff but she knew the Doctor had it in hand. Somewhat gingerly she got up and approached the left hand end of the rift and placed the transmuter on the ground. She glanced down the glowing pulsing line to where the Doctor stood on the far right, scanning. In the daylight the reflection from the orange light was much less and the illusion the rift had cast last night on his face and eyes was gone. Clara looked back at the tear in time and space and felt the heat radiate off of it and onto her skin. It still made her uneasy, it was a dimensional rift, a thing which was not supposed to be there at all so she had reason for that uneasiness, but the panic and fear she had felt before had dampened. Soon the rift wouldn’t be there at all and its memory would vanish like her nightmares.

She turned back to the box to collect the next device and slowly made her way down the edge of the rift, crossing paths with the Doctor has he worked his way up it, making small final adjustments to each transmuter. As focused as he was he gave her a smile and brushed her arm with his hand as he passed. Clara felt the calm intelligence of his mind as he calculated figures and changed settings and then with everything in place he guided her back towards the crowd to wait.

‘Best if everyone stays back,’ he said, ‘These things can be a bit unpredictable once you start fiddling with them,’ he moved back a few paces from the rift himself and then turned to face it, the final scan running on his sonic and his brow knit in concentration as he eyed the results. ‘Fine,’ he declared,’ I’m going to set off the transmuters, might get a bit bright…’

And he aimed the sonic at the transmuter on the far left.

Like dominios the devices followed each other’s trigger and a wave of green coloured energy ran the length of the rift before doubling back and rippling down the tear again. As the moments passed the green colour became more intense and squinting against the light Clara could see the edges of the tear gradually binding together with stitch like motions. The Doctor moved slightly from side to side aiming the sonic and the various tramsuters as the process continued, topping up or plugging an energy leak or reinforcing a particular stubborn area which refused to bind. Behind her the Anuhsri hummed appreciatively but Clara also picked up a distinct sense of disappointment that the show wasn’t more spectacular or eventful. The mighty Time Lord who had saved their world before was now casually darning a split in time and space with no more urgency than a man sewing on a button.

_Well good, I’m going right off drama._

Clara folded her arms and watched him, her mind wandering slightly, as his was, she detected. She saw him above her again, the light from his body glowing warmly, the feeling of him pressing down on her, solid, heavy, hers. She smiled and pictured herself laying him down on their own bed and kissing a trail down his chest and belly, tracing it with her fingers, tasting the slight saltiness of his skin as his hands found her hair and guided her on.

In front of her the rift flickered a final time and sealed completely, the orange vanishing and the green from the transmuters beginning to fade. They broke into a smatter of spontaneous applause, and Clara joined politely, but smiled a private smile just for him as he turned to face the crowd. In a gesture that spoke of relaxed completion of his task he tossed the sonic into the air where it spun…

And then the world slowed almost to a halt and a thick arm of orange flame burst from where the rift had been and thrust forward, at once wrapping itself around and pushing through the Doctor’s chest so that his scream was torn from his throat and blood spattered the forest floor, viscous and vivid like red spilled wine.

The light held him for a moment as his head fell back and his arms became rigid, extended to each side, before it spread along the lengths of his limbs and coloured his face in amber and gold. He bent his head and his eyes met Clara’s and there were no words to describe the emotions which poured from him in the split second that his gaze lit upon her face. She felt it more than heard it and she recognised it too, because after all she’d seen it before, on Trenzalore, in the TARDIS, in her dreams. The terror ran through her afresh and she knew now she had been right.

And the feeling ran through her as it ran through him, and it would be the last thing they shared; a mixture of fear and loss and pain, a plea for help answered only with the helpless.

He didn’t take his eyes from her.

_Clara?_

And then there was no more time. The flames pulled back, the rift reopened and both it and the Doctor were consumed in fire.

For a beat the forest breeze blew peacefully through the trees and everything was still again.

And then Clara was screaming into that silence as the dimension tore him away, as he was ripped brutally from her mind. She fell to her knees at once blinded by the flash from the rift and shrouded in the darkness of her strangely empty consciousness. It felt as though her soul was bleeding, pouring life force from her; it felt as though darkness was taking her and she would never breathe again as she fell through the bloodstained layers of a vacant hollow void.

_He’s gone._

_He’s gone._

_He’s GONE._

The sonic clattered to the ground.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter deals with bereavement after a sudden loss which some readers may find upsetting.

Gossamer and the faint sound of someone humming.

Clara opened her eyes slowly and looked up at the canopy suspended over their bed. Its material shifted slightly in a soft breeze and then settled again slowly, billowing a little as it fell. Beyond it she thought she could hear a silence like that of a spring morning, bathed in yellow sunlight, the twitter of birds and flow of streams its only percussion.

And the hum. Distant, deep and musical. A relaxed and unaware noise from the throat of its owner. She tried to identify the tune but it escaped her so she focused harder on the sound and discovered with it the soft pad of footsteps across the floor. Not that distant then, close in fact. Clara smiled as she pictured him moving quietly around the room so not to disturb her, his dark suit a stark contrast to the pale furnishings but his eyes as blue as the flowers that grew by the door.

She rolled in the direction of the sound and the hum stopped. The second it did she realised and her picture perfect morning disintegrated like shattered glass around her causing her to sit up sharply, a sudden knot of anguish in her chest and her breath growing tight. There were tears in her eyes before she could pant out the word.

‘Doctor?’

A figure moved behind the gossamer drapes and she half had hope for a tiny instant before it stepped out and revealed itself to be not the Doctor but his aide. She stared at him uncomprehending for a moment longer before her body slumped and her eyes dropped to her hands.

‘It’s you,’ she said flatly.

‘Do you need anything?’ Eck asked with a tone as close to kindness as she had heard in the strangely formal Anushri.

_You know what I need._

‘No, thank you.’

He lingered by the drapes, his wings beating slowly behind him, a hesitant uncertain movement born of the need to act. Clara supposed wasps were always busy and bustling, since the Doctor vanished Eck had been assigned to her and as such had been almost totally confined to the suite.

She had been unable to do anything at first. When the rift took him it tore him from her mind as well as body and pain and loss was so agonising that she had plummeted into unconsciousness quickly and lain there for hours as the Anushri rushed her back to the city. They had plied her with soothing cloths and sweet nectar that through her drifting consciousness they had held to her lips so that the taste penetrated into the ruined darkness that was all that was left.

Then she had woken the first time and discovered new truths about grief. Truths like the strength in her legs leaving her as she had tried to stand. Truths like the sheen of sweat which coated her just from fear and made her skin tremble with cold. Truths like and the constant repetition in her head.

_NoNoNoNoNoItsNotTrueItsNotTrueItsNotTrue_

It lasted all night. That cold hot anxious tired feeling.

Clara was no stranger to grief but this had another quality altogether. Oh she had thought that she had felt grief before, she had had more than her share in her lifetime, but this… it sat heavy in her chest and churned her stomach. It made her hands shake and her breath come in snatches. It made her want to pace the room, flee the feeling but it took from her all power. She had never felt grief like this, it bound itself around and within her like steel so that she hung limply in its fist. It spoke to her in heavy tones that told her that it was there to stay, that she would never be without it, that there could be no world without grief when the world was without him.

Before she had always known that she would survive, now she wasn’t sure. Before grief had been a part of life, something which came to everyone eventually, now it felt alien and unprecedented. Before she knew about the stages, the denial, the anger, the common steps on the path down healing and she half anticipated them as she made her way. But this… there was no precedent to this, no manual to follow, because no one had ever felt a loss like this before.

For the first time Clara realised that she didn’t just love the Doctor, she didn’t just need him, she _was_ him. Her existence was so bound to his that with him gone there was nothing left of her.

None of this made sense. It couldn’t make sense. It had to be a dream. It was a dream that’s what it was. A dream within a dream just like the ones in the North Pole. Maybe the whole thing had never been real. Maybe they were still there, Clara in her bed at home, the Doctor on a far away planet, dream crabs still firmly in place and their minds being tricked and seduced.

She could deal with that, she decided. She could deal with losing all of the last week, all of the pleasure and love between them, all of those moments she had so carefully stored in her memory of their first days shared truly as a couple. She would give up all of that if he was alive.

She just had to wake up.

_WakeUpWakeUpWakeUp_

She kneeled in the centre of her bed and squeezed her eyes shut. None of it was real she just had to wake up. She pressed her hands over her eyes and dug her fingers into her forehead. She just had to wake up. It was just a dream. Any moment the Doctor would come for her and remove the dream crab and they would start all over again.

Clara waited.

With a sob she dropped her hands again. Not a dream.

There was no ice cream pain in her temple and he wasn’t coming for her.

Time drifted on, the Anushri came and went, offering her fruits and sweetmeats but never knowing quite what to say. Relationships between couples were alien to them governed as they were by their King and Queen who effectively were parents to all and the only pairing needed to maintain the population. As such they viewed Clara as they might view their little King, she was tied to the Doctor but he was the one with the true status. Their sense of duty and of compassion for any creature in pain led them to want to care for her, but she knew they couldn’t truly understand, theirs was a different form of love.

So she had sipped quietly at the smooth nectar and forced her body to hold it down. She had stared past the concerned faces of the Anushri to the far side of the room where he had stood just that morning. Why wasn’t he standing there now? He was there just hours ago. Hours were so small, tiny pieces of time and he was a Time Lord. Surely it wasn’t so hard for him to be standing there again now? Surely he would just walk back in?

_He isn’t there, he isn’t there! The Doctor is dead._

_He isn’t dead, he isn’t…_

_He’s DEAD._

_Death is just another room._

_Then why can’t you feel him? Why hasn’t he walked back in?_

She looked harder at the door and willed him to appear. Just walk back in, it’s so simple, just a few paces, you do it all the time, just walk back in.

But he didn’t, and he couldn’t, and she couldn’t bring herself to understand why.

XXXXXXX

Night turned back to day. Clara lay down, snatched moments of peace, woke and forgot then remembered. Twenty four hours passed.

The rift had sealed over and taken him with it and now she couldn’t feel him. The ragged edged wound in her mind had ceased to pour with blood but now lay seeping, the smallest fragments of him left at the edges of the gaping hole he had once filled. Clara closed her eyes and tried to focus on the thing she could only describe as his essence. The feel and sound and sense of him that made up the colours of their joined minds. She tried and tried until her unpractised mind cramped and cried out in exhaustion, angry with her, angry at itself.

Angry with him for leaving her.

The clock ticked on, through morning and into afternoon and her muscles felt tired and stiff. This time yesterday…

_This time yesterday he was alive._

_This time yesterday he was here… walking through the forest… at the rift…_

_This time yesterday it happened…_

_This time yesterday he was gone…._

The clock ticked on unfazed by the content of her memories, it just kept going, no respect for the…

… _Dead._

For her... no respect for her or her grief. Just endless ticking time. Shouldn’t it go slower? This time yesterday he was gone. Shouldn’t something magical or significant happen to mark the moment? Shouldn’t it mean something the passing of those seconds?

Silence and stillness and nothing changing. Clara held her breath and nothing changed.

But as the moments moved past the time the Doctor had vanished she felt a fog lift from her mind as though she had been waiting all that time just to mark the event. She marked it with a minute of stillness and then she looked at her hands, held them out before her and flexed her fingers and something tiny sparked in her mind. The fog was lifting, her brain slowly turning gears her mind ruled thus far by wild painful emotion beginning to function again, just barely.

_I’m still here. And I’m… what am I…?_

Eck shuffling by the drapes his head lowered. He clicked and hummed and buzzed in discomfort. Ever dutiful he waited for instruction, he did not rest, he did not sleep, he just stood. Now his hum distracted her. Clara looked up at him curiously and truly saw him for the first time.

‘You don’t need to stand there,’ she said, ‘You must be hungry, or tired, you’ve been here hours.’

Eck looked a little confused at the direction of her conversation and her sudden speech and took a moment to reply. ‘Our metabolisms are very slow, Companion, our needs very few.’

‘My name is Clara.’

_And I’m still here…_

‘You are the Doctor’s Companion,’ Eck corrected her.

That tiny spark again. The Doctor’s Companion. She had been that yes. And then briefly something much more. And now?

_What am I…?_

_I’m still here. I’m his Companion. Present tense not past. I’m still here and…_

She almost had it, that thing at the edge of her consciousness that felt like an answer but then Clara’s mind drifted again and the pain in her lungs threated to swallow her whole. She could feel the tears coming and she knew that when they did there would not be hours lost to them but days, she would cry until her body failed her and it still wouldn’t be enough. She bit her lip and tried to swallow past the lump at her throat but the shaking had started. Why had she woken up from her fog just to feel this?

‘He’s gone, Eck,’ she said suddenly and gripped the edge of the bed, ‘He can’t be gone, he can’t be really gone, that’s not how it works, it’s never how it works, he comes back,’ she looked up sharply at the unreadable eyes of the Anushri, ‘He comes _back_.’

_And I’m still here which means…?_

‘The rift is gone,’ Eck said in a conflicted little voice, ‘He…. Can’t come back. He sealed the rift…. He probably saved us and our world from a future…’

‘He sealed the rift for you and it _took_ him!’ she snapped, ‘This is your fault!’

His huge blank eyes gazed over at her unmoving but not unkind.

‘Our scientists have been at the sight of the… accident… since it happened,’ Eck buzzed softly, ‘We don’t have the technology to understand the rift, that is why we needed the Doctor. We want to help but…. We needed him, we don’t have the knowledge. Please… we are grieving as you are…’

Clara scrunched her hands into her hair, tugging at it to distract from the brimming tears. The wasp meant no harm, she knew that, but the Doctor had been doing his species a favour and now he was gone. She wanted to hate them, blame them, pour hot words into their ears and make them burn for his loss. She sprang up and paced the floor, her limbs conflicted at once wanting to curl into a ball and lash out at the universe.

Eck pressed his little claw like hands together and twisted them sadly. ‘We don’t know how to help,’ he said more to himself than to her. Clara bit into her knuckle and forced back a sob. She was dimly aware of Eck moving closer, when she finally glanced at him she saw him offer a tiny square of muslin and lace.

And with it he offered to her the only advice he had. ‘For your tears,’ he said. ‘You should shed them.’

Clara broke. She stumbled back towards the bed with the handkerchief clutched tightly in one hand and fell to her side with a painful sob that seemed to take all the air from her chest. The tears poured from her eyes and burned in her throat so that she could barely swallow them away. Her breath came in tormented gasps that sounded more and more like cries until finally she was screaming his name into the thick sheets of the bed, wrapping the material around her fingers and clinging to it as though she might fall and vanish as he had. They smelled of him, of his skin and his aftershave, of their lovemaking.

But he was really gone, really gone and there was no way back. No way back to his voice, his eyes his smile, his arms. She had only just found him, truly, and now he had been torn away from her forever. All of that future, taken, all of it gone. Forever stretched out ahead of her with nothing to its name, it was nothing without him. And the Doctor, how long had he waited already for this sort of happiness? Two thousand years only to give himself to her for one little week, a taste of what could be. Where was he now? Pulled into an unknown dimension, his body torn and punctured by the orange fire. She couldn’t picture him, she tried to picture him. Force her mind to the grotesque image of his body lying ruined somewhere, but it didn’t fit, it couldn’t be.

Her sobs peaked and fell again and gradually her cries became words directed at no-one in particular and hopeless in their intent. Like a child she simply could not grasp that the end meant the end.

‘I can’t do this, I don’t know how to do this, I need him, please I need him, please just let him come back, bring him back.’ The litany continued until her voice was hoarse and weak and her throat was thick with tears. Eck laid one strange hand upon her arm and the words slowly fell silent replaced only with that nagging feeling in her mind.

_But I’m still here… and…_

There was movement again by the doorway and a low clicking of voices between Anushri. Clara lay still, trying to grasp her thoughts and aware of Eck trying to shoo whoever it was away to leave her in her misery. After a few minutes it became clear that he had failed in his task and eventually she pulled herself up to look. The Anushri scientist stood before her a basket in one hand and the Doctor’s sonic in the other.

Anger tore through her.

‘Give me that!’ she dived off the bed and snatched the sonic. The scientist and his two companions flinched as one.

‘We were only trying to…’

‘Trying to what? This is Gallifreyan, it’s too advanced for you to understand, only _he_ can understand it.’

‘Can you use it?’ he asked gingerly.

‘For some things, yes,’ Clara said forcing herself to lower her tone, ‘But you shouldn’t… it can be very dangerous in the wrong hands.’

The scientist looked somewhat ashamed and lowered his head, ‘We only wanted to try and help,’ he said twisting the basket between his claws, ‘We thought if we could understand the data… but we cannot read it.’

Clara felt mildly guilty. They probably had quite genuinely been trying to understand the rift and what had happened. They had given her no reason to think they did not care about the Doctor and indeed they seemed universally almost as griefstricken as her. Beyond the gossamer in the streets outside Anushri stood quietly on walkways and by the tranquil pools with candles and flowers clutched in their talon-like hands. The atmosphere could not have been more different from the celebrations that had gone before. They did care, all of them in their way, but they couldn’t care like she did. She was his friend, companion, lover, she was part of him. Suddenly the sonic was one of the most precious things in the universe and it was too precious for the Anushri to hold. _He_ had held it moments before the rift took him. In her mind’s eye she watched him scan the anomaly and seal the rip in time. She watched his smile as he tossed the sonic high in the air…

_I’m still here and…. And… that means…_

…. And fall to the ground.

Clara looked down at the screwdriver and carefully switched it on, its tip glowed green and the Anushri present focused their shining black eyes on it with curiosity until the light refracted across their dark kaleidoscope lenses. Her head was a rush of thoughts streaming through the shadows.

If she had vanished into that rift what would he be doing now?

_I’m still here and that means…._

What did he do even when things seemed impossible?

_Impossible… man… girl…_

What had he done when she had stepped into his timeline?

_I’m still here and ….I’m his Impossible Girl… I’m in his timeline….. and that means…._

He had tried to stop her. He had gone after her. And he had found her. Just as she would. They always found each other, through time and space.

_I’m part of him, he’s part of me, and I’m still here._

_I live to save him. And I’m still here._

_I live to save him._

Clara’s eyes burned but they were dry. With new clarity she flicked the sonic off again and looked up at Eck.

‘You’ve been assigned to me, right?’

‘Yes,’ he said, a hint of uncertainty in his tone.

She nodded to herself and then eyed the scientist, ‘You want to help?’

‘Of course.’

‘OK,’ she said, ‘Meet me where the rift was in an hour.’

‘But it’s gone,’ Eck said, ‘There’s no trace.’

‘Our staff have been trying to detect any element of the rift they could,’ the scientist said, ‘We have turned up with nothing, the rift is sealed.’

‘Then it has to be unsealed,’ Clara said turning to the bedside where some of her belongings and the Doctor’s were scattered and beginning to pocket them. Eck hovered nervously close to her.

‘We don’t know how to do that,’ the scientist said levelly as thought trying to keep his own emotions in check. The foolish human and her hopeless cause, how could he make her understand?

‘You don’t but I do,’ Clara remarked, ‘Well I don’t exactly, I’m hazy on the details, but I think I can figure out how…’

There was a murmur of curiosity from the gathered Anushri, Clara turned back to the door to notice a few heads poking round the curtain.

‘What you think I’m just the pretty face he travels with?’ She nipped at them waving the sonic, ‘I can work this thing, I can access the data for starters.’

‘Can you read it?’ the scientist asked with something like awe.

‘No,’ she admitted to a slump of his narrow shoulders, ‘But I know someone who can.’

 

XXXXXXXX

The Anushri had insisted on following her back to the TARDIS where they waited in a concerned group around the blue box as Clara fished the Doctor’s key from her pocket. For a terrible moment she had thought it had gone with him through the rift and she would have to persuade the spaceship to open up and let her in. But then she hazarded a guess that for the Doctor the TARDIS would do just that even if Clara wasn’t her favourite person. Some things they cared about equally. As the door swung open the lead scientist, little basket in hand stepped forward to join her but Clara shooed him away and entered the console room alone.

It was silent and dark, but after a moment the lights flickered up and a soft hum told her that the ship was awake and waiting.

‘Ok you old cow,’ Clara muttered approaching the central controls, ‘I know we’re not the best of friends but we need to work together on this one and I need your help.’ She withdrew the sonic from her pocket and turned it on, flicking open a hatch on the dashboard of the console and inserting the screwdriver. ‘Basically I’ve no idea what readings are on this but I need you to look at it and tell me where he is….’

The console hummed and a few lights flashed but there was little else to see. Clara chewed her lip, at once trying to think and hold herself together long enough to do so. She drummed her fingers on the edge of the controls impatiently. ‘Really need your help,’ she repeated, ‘Any day…’

‘Hello Clara.’

She spun towards the gallery and the leather chair he always sat in, the blood draining from her face. The Doctor was seated comfortably, his long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, his fingers knit together in his lap. He regarded her coolly, head slightly to one side.

‘Didn’t mean to frighten you,’ he said kindly. He gathered himself and rose, standing at the top of the stairs, ‘But you see I have a message for you and he thought you’d be more likely to listen if I looked like him… I’m not so sure…’

_Like him… if I looked like him…_

‘When it comes to the Doctor you and I can be equally stubborn,’ he went on. ‘So I suspect you’ll dismiss this but I’ll pass it on regardless.’

Clara’s heart was racing painfully as she stared at his face, his eyes, the way his dark suit hung on his lean frame. The voice, the mannerisms, everything was just so, but the hollowness in her mind told her that this was not the Doctor, it was an illusion built by the TARDIS, a hard light interface to aid communication. She knew it but a part of her still wanted to run to him, hold him, drink him in.

He stepped down the stairs slowly, pace by pace and approached her and with the movement more of the illusion fell away. She was close enough to inhale him had he really been the Doctor, but there was no scent. She raised one hand to touch his cheek with curiosity, no scent, and no warmth, no breath on her face. Her heart slowed again, biting painfully as her eyes took in the cruel image of him conjured by the ship, so real but so lacking. She suddenly thought of a conversation the pair had shared right here just days ago.

_You can never replace what’s lost forever, Clara, nothing will ever come close to the original._

Nothing would ever come close. She had to get him back.

The TARDIS was looking at her levelly. None of the love she had seen in his eyes could be detected here, just the impassivity of the machine and a knowingness, a shared understanding about a man.

‘What message?’ Clara asked after a pause.

‘I will play it for you.’

The TARDIS projection of the Doctor looked down for a second and then appeared to shift gear, the image flickered once and his position altered a little. When he looked up again it was with the subtlest change to his body language and his eyes no longer focused on her. Instead he began to pace the room, deep in thought, as though trying to find words. Clara suddenly understood that this was a recording of _her_ Doctor playing through the interface.

‘Clara…’ he sighed, ‘I suspect if you’re witnessing this little show that something has gone horribly wrong on one of our trips. I am of course hoping that this particular recording rots in the basement of the TARDIS for all eternity but I thought it best I put something together on the off chance that…’ he paused and shoved his hands deep in his pockets, ‘Well on the off chance I finally run out of luck… or lives,’ his lips twitched in a painful smile.

‘I wanted to tell you two things,’ he went on. ‘One is very easy for me to say and the other… the other isn’t something I could say to you in life but owe to you in death.’

Clara frowned and watched as the hologram of her Doctor struggled to continue. There was a sheen to his eyes that she had seldom seen and the muscles of his jaw worked hard to contain stray emotion.

‘So the first thing first,’ he said gazing at the ceiling, ‘Whatever has happened, whatever monster has eaten me or vortex has consumed me I want you to promise me you’ll leave me to it. I don’t want heroics, Clara, I don’t want you fighting off cybermen or diving into black holes because you think you can save me somehow. Because I know you, and your courage, I’ve seen you do it before, I’ve seen you do it without thought and you almost didn’t make it back…’ he hesitated.

‘So many versions of you have lived and died Clara, but there is only one real you, and that’s this one. And whereas you may think your echoes were dispensable and destined to die for me, _you_ are not.’ The hologram looked up slightly and Clara almost felt him catch her eyes though she knew he did not see her, ‘You are not destined to die for me, Clara, promise me you won’t let that happen… I’m not worth that sacrifice…’ the words hung in the air for a moment as she fought back her tears and then he continued.

‘Which brings me to the second thing I need to tell you,’ the hologram showed the Doctor drawing a deep breath and bring his hands out of his pockets to wring them nervously. ‘I would have told you before, but you deserved better. And I hope whatever you are doing now you have that, whether it be with PE or…’

Clara frowned, when had he recorded this?

‘..or whichever other man you eventually end up with. I was selfish, I struggled to let you go, I should never have given you false hopes in the first place but I’m not a strong man. All I could think of was being around you, your devoted puppy in a bow tie… pathetic…’

Clara’s tears spilled over.

‘But I can tell you now, now I’m gone because there’s no reversing that, no arguing, and I never would want you to think I didn’t care. You deserve everything you want in life, Clara, and I never could have given you that. But that doesn’t mean….’ He cast his eyes around desperately, ‘Gods I wish I could see you, but then…’ he laughed, ‘then I probably wouldn’t have the courage to say it.’ Another breath and she watched him hold out his hand flat, the tremble in it noticeable from where she stood.

‘It doesn’t mean I didn’t love you,’ he said quietly, his face a portrait of regret, ‘In fact I always loved you, I never stopped. And if I felt I could have given you even a part of what you needed and deserved…. But I couldn’t and I’m sorry… for so much.’ The quiet of the TARDIS fell between her and his image as he considered his final words.

‘No heroics, Clara please,’ he resumed softly, ‘You’re the most precious thing in my universe and always will be, don’t put yourself in harm’s way for the sake of me.’

‘Goodbye, Clara. I love you.’

Her Doctor disappeared and the image reverted back to the TARDIS interface who trained his blue eyes on her and waited. Clara took a shaky breath and smeared away tears with the back of her hand. After a pause she looked back at the screwdriver in the console and then at the interface again.

_No heroics. No heroics?_

_Since when do I do as I’m told?_

‘Stupid man, stupid impossible man. Well he _did_ find the courage to tell me and this isn’t how it’s supposed to end. I’m not leaving him to wherever he is, to whatever has happened, if there’s even a tiny chance that he’s still out there somewhere I’ll bring him back,’ she glared at the hologram, ‘Are you going to help me or what?’

The interface smiled softly and flickered once.

‘What do you think?’ it said and vanished.

 

 

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

 

In the forest you would never have known the rift had been there. If it weren’t for the blood on the ground. For a minute Clara stood transfixed by it as the Anushri caught up to her and gathered in the same little clearing they had before when the Doctor had been there. When there was the promise of him sealing the rift with ease, putting on a little show for the wasps who regarded him as their hero. Now there was a grimness and uncertainty to the atmosphere as Clara looked at the splatter at her feet, turned dark with time. How much time had passed where he was now?

Behind her the TARDIS had parked itself within spitting distance of where the rift should reopen. Should. If it had calculated the data correctly and if Clara did her part. Rifts were not supposed to open at all and in typical fashion the Doctor had done a sterling job of sealing it thoroughly. There was a chance it would refuse to budge, or open onto the wrong dimension entirely, as it was there wasn’t enough data to decipher exactly where the Doctor’s rift had led to which complicated things considerably.

Clara felt Eck by her elbow, quietly supportive and slightly afraid. He held a dark green bag made of rough fibres which Clara had packed with necessities and items advised by the TARDIS. One in particular had fascinated her as the hard light interface had tinkered with it and then warned her to use it only in the very direst of emergencies. The TARDIS hologram had the Doctor down pat as it had fiddled with the sonic and rewired the device, right down to the concentration in his eyes. Clara had been forced to turn away and wait it out as it appeared and disappeared around the ship making adjustments to the plan while wearing his face. It had almost been unbearable but the sight had also motivated her. If the plan didn’t work the hologram would be all she had left, its image growing dim with passing time and her heart breaking every time she saw it. She had to ensure she tried to find him, the Doctor’s plan to have the TARDIS wear his face to make her listen to his pleas for her safety had well and truly backfired. Nothing would motivate her more to save him.

Before they had set off Eck had also given her some concentrated healing nectar in the hope that she would find the Doctor alive, the tiniest drop would heal a surprisingly large wound. Clara hoped she wouldn’t need much but suspected it would come in useful. She tucked it in the bag along with other medical supplies, for burns and bleeds and traumas of all kinds as neither of them knew what if anything she would find. She also had some from the TARDIS that were Time Lord specific and prayed that between them she’d packed something that would be of use. Now she could feel Eck willing her on, a nervous buzz escaping from him every now and again.

In front of Clara the head scientist was pacing the length of where the rift had been and carefully eyeing the transmuters which sat dormant along that line. He still had his little basket hooked over one spindly arm and it swung and bounced off his body as he moved. Briefly Clara wondered as to its contents and why he carried it with him everywhere but her mind had bigger concerns. Finally he turned to her with as close to a look of doubtful hesitation as he could manage on his angular wasps face.

‘You believe this will work?’ he asked.

‘The TARDIS says it’s the best chance,’ Clara replied lifting her gaze from the blood spots at her feet. ‘And she would know.’

The wasp looked incredulously at the police box, ‘The Doctor’s _ship_ thinks it will work?’

‘The Doctor’s ship is a sentient and highly advanced time machine,’ Clara said, ‘It’s her job to understand dimensions. It’s just a shame we don’t have enough data to see precisely where he went or we could just hop there in her… but dimensions are big places and we need to be specific. When the Doctor did the scan he wasn’t expecting to have to pay a visit to it. Without the right co-ordinates we could end up millions of miles from him. We have to reopen the rift and hope we do so accurately enough to fall through it somewhere close to where he is.’

The wasp looked dubiously at the forest beyond where he stood. It was peaceful and unmarked, sunlight scattering through the leaves of the silver trees.

‘If you tear open a hole in the dimensions, isn’t there a risk… well a risk it could go wrong?’ he asked with an air of understatement.

‘The TARDIS will control how far it opens,’ Clara said pulling the sonic from her pocket, ‘She won’t allow it to haemorrhage. If she feels it become unstable she’ll shut it down.’

The wasp looked alarmed. ‘Leaving you and the Doctor stranded?’

‘If necessary, yes,’ Clara said absently as she made her way over to the transmuters. ‘He wouldn’t want me to destroy your world by accident for his sake,’

_He doesn’t even want me to try… for his sake._

Clara stopped by the first transmuter and glanced across at the open doors of the TARDIS and deep inside the console room. She blinked and in a moment the interface Doctor appeared by the controls. With the Anushri’s attention focused on her she shared a private smile with the hologram which served to remind her again of how much was at stake, and aiming the sonic at the first transmuter let forth a stream of green light until the device flashed of its own accord and she could move on to the next. She worked down the line, the lights growing more intense as she went and by the end of it the forest was lit as brightly as it had been when the rift was being sealed. As yet the rift itself was not visible however and Clara stepped back to stand near the TARDIS. She was joined by Eck and held her hand out for her bag.

‘Be careful,’ he said softly and gazed at her with admiration in his huge dark eyes. Clara thanked him quietly and then looked back into the TARDIS where she could see the lights of the central column working frantically as the transmuters broadcast their information to it. There was a quiet roar and Clara heard the engines begin to strain as the makeshift design of the equipment they had set up to reverse the rift strained against the laws of physics and time. Clara felt the ship wrestle against the transmuters and force their signal back through them and for a horrible moment there was a silence before those engines exploded back into gear and the light from the transmuters glowed orange and red spilling across the forest.

‘That’a girl,’ Clara muttered. ‘Knew you could do it.’

There was a sudden jolt and the ground seemed to tremble, knocking Clara slightly from her feet and causing Eck to reach for her. On her other side the scientist stumbled and his precious basket flew from his grip bursting open. Another explosion for the site of the rift and Clara had a brief moment to see the tiny dark animal scamper from the basket and towards Eck whose face registered horror as he dived for the little creature and swung it protectively up into his arms. She had a second to realise just what it was before the rift tore open before them and rained down fire across the clearing. Clara shielded her face and clung to the side if the TARDIS as the final shockwaves pounded through the earth and the rift finally settled into a jagged pulsing line of amber gold.

Anushri all around on their knees, their backs, struggling to get up. The scientist was slowly gathering himself, panting next to her as his four legs scrabbled to push him up from the ground. Clara reached down to help him and then checked to see if Eck was still in one piece. She looked down into his arms and a large pair of wide purple eyes looked back at her.

‘For the Doctor,’ the scientist said catching her surprised expression, ‘When we realised how much he wanted a Maltheus we worked all night to create him.’

The Maltheus wriggled in Eck’s grip but never took its gaze from Clara. A little cautiously she reached out and touched its long floppy ears, scratching behind them and causing it to gurgle delightfully. She couldn’t help but smile at it, her first genuine smile since the Doctor had vanished.

‘He’s just a pup still of course,’ the scientist explained, ‘I understand they grow quite large and of course they have quite remarkable qualities, many of which we probably don’t know about, we haven’t much experience with creatures from that sector.’ A look of concern passed over his face as he watched the pup interact with Clara. ‘I think he’s imprinted on you, that’s why he was in the basket… to shield his eyes from his first face until… well we had hoped to give him to the Doctor, to thank him for….’ He glanced at the rift. ‘It’s all gone wrong,’ he sighed.

Clara let the little creature lick her hand.

_His first face. I was his first face. I was the Doctor’s first face too. What is it with things from Gallifrey?_

‘First face or not he’ll still love him,’ she said, ‘Eck? Will you take care of him until I’m… _we’re_ back?’ She suddenly felt the urge to sound certain for the sake of the defeated looking Anushri around her. They really hadn’t meant for this to happen, they really were trying their best.

‘It would be my pleasure,’ Eck said, securing the pup in his arms a little more as Clara pulled her hand away and it strained to follow. ‘Has he a name?’

‘Fido,’ she said without hesitation. ‘Right… well no time to waste,’ she went on, ‘I’m on a bit of a clock here.’

The Anushri took a few paces forward with her as she approached the rift and in an echo of the Doctor’s own actions held her hands to its heat and watched it flicker under her palms. It all seemed a bit too real now that she could touch it.

‘How will you… how will you get in?’ the scientist asked.

‘Same way he did,’ she said bravely, ‘Hopefully less violently but same principle.’

‘You don’t know what it will do to you,’ Eck whispered to her right, ‘It could tear you to pieces, hurt you as it hurt him.’

‘It’s a thing I do…’ Clara reassured him, ‘It’s not the first wibbly wobbly timey whimey glowy thing I’ve jumped into on his behalf.’ The rift pulsed almost at the sound of her voice and she eyed it suspiciously as though it too was sentient and challenging her to take it on. She hitched her bag onto her shoulder further and chewed her lip, scanning the tear in dimensions for a suitable entry point. None of it looked particularly welcoming but she didn’t want the Anushri to see that actually she was pretty nervous. She breathed out shakily and held one hand out to its surface again, dipping the ends of her fingers into the heat and then withdrawing sharply.

Slow wasn’t going to be an option then. Better just dive in.

‘OK,’ she said to no one in particular, ‘O…K.’ and lifting both her hands outstretched before her she took a large pace forward.

The rift reacted immediately spinning tendrils of flame towards her waiting body and wrapping them around her painfully. Clara was hauled forward and through a blur of hot fire she saw the blue skies of the Anushri world spiral above her before they shifted and turned to darkness. Something or someone grasped at her leg and she felt the sharp prick of claws sink into her ankle and tried to kick against the sensation without any success. Then at once it was the least of her worries as her lungs blazed with heat and she was forced to close her eyes, feeling herself falling, falling forever through space, before the fire burned again at her skin and she crashed face first onto the ground. Clara gasped for breath, winded and disorientated and caught a brief glimpse of a dark sky above her before her vision clouded and she slumped into unconsciousness.

XXXXXXX

Something was licking her face. More accurately her temple. Clara froze where she lay and tried to control her breathing as the mystery creature snuffled around her head applying its saliva at various points. It stung and nipped but she was determined not to flinch lest she give the game away and show it that she was conscious again. Clara had been to a lot of planets and a number of dimensions over the years and the probability of this thing being friendly was fairly low. Best err on the safe side.

The slurping continued and Clara felt her face becoming stickier. This really was quite unpleasant and dangerous beastie or not she felt her irritation with it increase rapidly. It was the sound more than anything, its revolting repetitive glugging. She struggled with the urge to bat it away but realised she had no idea how big it was and if any sharp teeth went alongside that persistent noisy tongue. Very cautiously she allowed one eyelid to flicker slightly open, feigning continued sleep. The thing moved across her face and suddenly a large purple eye came into view staring down into her own merrily. Clara opened her eyes.

‘Fido!’ she whispered. Fido responded with an enthusiastic barrage of licking. ‘Fido, stop it, eww… get off… how did you get here?’

A dim memory of little claws in her ankle resurfaced and Clara made the connection. He’d obviously escaped Eck’s grip as she had entered the rift and dived after her, driven by his need to stick with his First Face. Given the fire and heat he was lucky to be in one piece. Clara didn’t feel so lucky. Her body ached, her clothes smelled singed and when she lifted her hand to her head she found that Fido had apparently been licking at grazed and broken skin, her fingers coming away bloodstained, dark in the gloom of the new world around them.

‘Imprinted on me are you? Decided to follow me into the mystery dimension? Idiot. You and the Doctor are going to get on famously,’ she grumbled at him but was secretly pleased of the company as she started to take in her surroundings. Welcoming it was not and suddenly Fido was as appreciated as a stuffed toy in a child’s dark bedroom when something scary lay under the bed. A brief image of a frightened young Doctor came into Clara’s mind, huddled under the covers. She wondered if he’d ever lain in bed with his pet as his guard against things that went bump in the night.

At first Clara looked around her and saw relatively little, then her eyes adjusted and what she could see was unpleasant. To one side and down a slight incline the rift was still visible but she appeared to have been thrown some distance from it as she passed through. She was lying on the broken twigs and debris of a forest floor but this forest had none of the freshness or colour of the one she had left behind. It smelled of mulch and the leaves were dead underfoot and overhead, hanging like decaying butterflies from the trees. It was quiet too, not a peaceful silence but a stilted one as though the world around was too frightened to make a noise. A chill passed through her body and she hugged the warm little Maltheus who had crawled down into her lap and sat gazing adoring at her. He was incredibly warm and noticing how his eyes shone in the dark a little she wondered if he had good night vision.

Twigs scratched at her hands as Clara felt around for her bag, eventually finding it not too far away and its contents thankfully intact but the movement only served to make her realise how much damage she had sustained coming through the rift. She could feel blood trickling from her forehead and stinging into her eyes. Reluctantly she took a tiny sip of healing nectar in the hope it would make her feel slightly better and then shoved the little vial in her pocket to save the rest for the Doctor.

Clara slung the bag back over her shoulder and tried to push herself up from the ground, encouraging Fido to give her space. He hopped around her feet as she slipped in mud and grimaced, and eventually hauled herself up by holding tight onto the rough bark of the nearest tree. Now standing she could see through a few of the barer trees and towards the horizon where a red moon hung lowly in the sky. It looked familiar but alien too and Clara began wondering vaguely about dimensions and alternates trying to remember the various lectures the Doctor had given her on such things in the past. Had she been here before or did one alien moon look much like another?

After a few minutes wondering and looking about trying to pin down her location Clara gave up and focused on the task in hand. The Doctor had fallen through the rift and if she was lucky he would be nearby. She didn’t like to think about the possibility that she wasn’t lucky and he was in another world entirely. She had to focus on finding him.

Clara thought back to the conversation she had had with the TARDIS as she had piloted it down to the clearing where the rift would reopen. The Doctor shaped interface had explained its own psychic connection with the Doctor and explored some of Clara’s recent telepathic experiences with her in the hope they might prove useful. Neither of their links could cross dimensions if the Doctor had passed through the rift but now that she was on the right side of that tear she might pick up again on him if their connection remained strong enough. More than a day had passed but she still held the hope that they were somehow joined, the Doctor’s voice echoing in her mind as he explained that the intensity of their union might lead to a psychic hangover of days rather than hours.

‘Ok… let’s give it a go,’ she said out loud.

Clara shut her eyes and stood in the eerie silence in the hope of feeling something but her mind was proving a difficult thing to control since his disappearance. It flooded with memories and grief in waves which washed away the attempts she made at finding him. She’d fight them back and try again only to have them blast across the surface of her thoughts and destroy her efforts. Clara opened her eyes in frustration at her brains lack of co-operation. It was little wonder he referred to humans as pudding brains, compared to his telepathic abilities hers were laughable even when amped up by her borrowed connection to him. She looked down and saw Fido at her feet and watched as he shook his head violently, sending ears flapping.

‘I know I know… keep trying.’

Again she closed her eyes. What if there was nothing out there to sense? What if he really was gone and there were no thoughts, no emotions, no sensations at all? She tried to push that thought from her mind as she groped forward in the darkness of empty consciousness and reached for him. As best she could she emptied her thoughts and looked again at the wound he left within her when he had disappeared, the tiny fragments of him that remained. She focused down and touched them, hoping to find something, a sound, an image, a spark…

‘Ah!’ Clara cried.

The pain hit her with such force that she fell forward onto her knees, her hands clutching at her chest as she desperately tried to catch her breath. She gasped and choked and when the air wouldn’t come she slumped to the ground, hands barely catching her before she collapsed sideways. It burned and it tore, twisting around her heart and clawing at her. She fought the sensation, trying to drive it away with her mind, pushing it as far away as possible without losing the connection, building brick by brick a protective wall against it just as the Doctor had advised her when she had tried to block his thinking, until at last she was able to draw breath and heaved herself into a sitting position again. In shock she waited until her breathing steadied and wrapped one hand in the soft fur of the Maltheus who sat worriedly by her side.

‘He’s here,’ she said as the pain circled her heart. ‘He’s definitely here I can feel him. At least I can feel what the rift did to him.’ Clara closed her eyes again and tried to reach beyond the pain, beyond the physical sensation and into his mind, searching, hunting for his consciousness and for a way to let him know that she was coming, she would get him out. She frowned and tried again, acknowledging he was injured but trying to bypass it to connect to the essence of him.

There was nothing there. Only pain.

‘Where is he?’ she muttered, ‘Why can’t I see?’

No thoughts, no emotions, nothing reached her from his consciousness and it was then that she realised there was no consciousness to reach.

‘I think… I think he’s out cold,’ she said to the little creature by her side, ‘I think…’ and she grimaced as the pain ran across her chest in another stifling wave, ‘I think he’s in a bad way.’ For the first time since she had determinedly stepped through the rift tears threatened to spill again. She had had a vague notion that once on this side of the dimension her connection with the Doctor would lead her to him but now she had reached a dead end. He was here, he was injured but his unconsciousness darkened the path ahead of her. How would she find him now? She looked at the moon rising redly in the sky ahead watched as it gradually lit an expanse of barren land that stretched crimson under its light. She equipped the sonic and used it as a torch, peering through the trees and trying to find a path through the wasteland.

Barren earth, forests, darkness. The rift was close by but that didn’t mean he was, that had just been her hope, her starting point. He could be buried in undergrowth, deep in the trees. He could be lying huddled somewhere having dragged himself to shelter or laid out in the elements thrown and discarded by the tear in dimensions. He could be anywhere.

Clara stood and took a deep breath. He could be anywhere and anywhere was going to take time. She didn’t have time, the TARDIS was at that moment fighting with the dimension to keep the rift open long enough for her to find the Doctor and bring him back. And that wasn’t the only clock that was ticking. In her mind her telepathic connection to him pulsed like a bruised heartbeat and made her head hurt, but that connection wouldn’t last either. She had to get a move on.

She was about to do just that when she heard the voices.

There were two of them and they chattered closely together, a mixture of clicks and hums and buzzes. Clara quickly turned the sonic off and ducked down on her knees in the debris that littered the forest floor. At first she strained her ears to hear the words but then rapidly realised why the sounds were so familiar and yet not comprehensible. She eased up a fraction and squinted through the trees.

Anushri. Two of them as she suspected. Her heart leapt, the Anushri planet was one she knew a little about, populated by aliens that were welcoming, indeed downright hospitable especially if you were a Time Lord. If the Doctor had emerged here there was a good chance he would be being tended to. But almost in the instant the thoughts entered Clara’s head she noticed something.

The wasps walked side by side heads bowed and bodies covered with dark green armour. She watched as their legs swung like metronomes in perfect synchronicity with one another. Clara briefly thought of Eck, his shuffling stance and his joy at the play he and his contemporaries put on for them. He could not have been more opposite from these mannered and formal creatures.

As they passed closer Clara held her breath. She could hear the pace of each footstep, surprisingly heavy, but it was their weapons which drew her eyes. On their left arms hung rounded shields, again decorated in green, and in their right something which looked like an axe. Over their backs however curved a huge stinger that shone in the red moonlight. It suddenly occurred to Clara that she had never seen the stings of the peaceable Anushri on the other side of the rift. These creatures were different, bred by the Queen for another purpose. Warriors and soldier wasps as the Doctor had explained. These were not peaceable drones or workers, these were built to fight. Her eyes flicked over their armour again. Green. Green like in the play.

The pieces began to come together in her mind. This was still the world of the Anushri but it was a world where peace was yet to happen and where the rebel contingent still held power. This was a world where the Doctor hadn’t ended the Thousand Year War, where he wasn’t a hero, where he might well be an enemy. Clara felt a fresh rush of fear fill her, there were no friends to be had here. She took a hesitant step backwards away from the wasps.

A branch cracked and their heads turned as one, sharp and angular, eyes boring into her, multi-lensed and uncanny. They let out a low buzz and in an instant they were rushing towards her.

Clara turned as fast as her body could carry her and belted through the forest, stumbling almost as often as she leapt over branches and rocks, twigs snapping across her raised arms and lashing her face. She could hear them behind her, making short work of the trees which blocked her path with the sheer weight of their armour and shields. They were closing in and her bag caught on a branch almost tipping her backwards as she raced past it. She tugged once at it before being forced to plough on, hearing it thud to the ground and registering a sense of despair at the loss of what equipment she had managed to bring… and Oh God the Maltheus…. Where was the Maltheus? It was just a baby… But there was no going back. Fear was propelling her now, fear and love, her legs starting to burn as she ran, her breath aching. Fear that if they caught her she’d die. Fear that if she died, no-one would find him.

Fear consumed her, it gave her strength.

_Fear is a superpower._

She stumbled forward and found herself on a vague path, the Anushri crashing behind her and briefly tangling their limbs in some undergrowth which slowed their progress for seconds alone. A few more steps and they would be on her and then…

_Clara!_

Two sensations at once. The pain around her heart exploding was the first. She staggered.

_Clara!_

And then the second, in her mind. A rush of fierce emotion driven by something primitive. Something that had been missing was re-emerging, it was coming back to life and it was doing so on a crest of powerful relentless feeling. Anger and ferocious possessiveness, a red mist of fury. She felt it surge through her with such force it almost knocked her from her feet. A storm was coming on a wave of instinct.

An instinct to protect her.

An instinct strong enough to wake the…

_Clara!_

She burst forward from the trees the Anushri at her back, the feel of two claws on her shoulders hauling her towards them, and came rushing into a clearing, a clearing she knew and recognised from a forgotten dream. But her mind had no time to process the sight in front of her, just register the pallor of his face against the expanse of blood on his shirt, the slump of his battered frame as he pulled himself up from the ground, and the anger in his eyes as the soldier wasps tore at her vulnerable skin.

He held out his hand and she tossed the sonic to him but it wasn’t fast enough as the pain tore through her side and with it the stinger of an Anushri. The pain seared and for a moment she was suspended above the forest floor, her breath taken from her as it skewered her abdomen and then Clara’s eyes grew wide as its tip punched through her body as easily as a needle through silk cloth. The Anushri pulled back almost as suddenly as it had attacked, throwing her forward, and dumped her to the ground.

‘Doctor,’ she gasped.

The flash from the sonic, the feel of his rage, the sight of him dropping to his knees, blood splattering the space between them...

….and then darkness.

 


	8. Chapter 8

 

The last of the evening sun was on her face and the cool blades of grass at her fingertips as she lay in the peaceful gardens of their cottage. She could feel the fibres of the picnic blanket tickling her arms and hear birdsong in the trees nearby. Not an ounce of tension, not a care, just her and the little world he had created for them.

‘Clara, come inside now,’ the Doctor’s voice came from the doorway.

‘I’m comfy…’

‘It’s going to be dark soon, you can’t lie there all night.’

‘If I did lie here all night I’d be fine,’ she protested.

‘You’d freeze,’ he admonished, ‘Now come inside.’

Clara heard him move back into the cottage and reluctantly opened her eyes. Above her the twin suns of their world were moving quickly across the sky, too quickly she thought as she watched them, they looked as though they were racing, keeping pace with one another as they rushed towards the horizon. She sat up and followed them with her eyes and then on impulse looked back over her shoulder to find the rising moon, she blinked and it glowed red for just a moment before it gave chase to the suns, but then it was pale again and innocent. The sky hung balanced between the suns and moon to the east and west for a beat before the light changed and night fell quickly.

She pushed herself up and stopped to gather the picnic blanket, her skin prickling with sudden cold. She noticed for the first time that her arms were bare and looked down to find she was dressed in a pale silk gown in simple cream. Clara didn’t remember choosing it, or dressing that day at all, in fact when she tried to focus on the memory it danced away. What had she been doing this morning? When had she gone outside to lie in the sun?

‘Clara!’ his voice from inside the cottage urging her in and now the little world didn’t look so welcoming in the dark. The flowers at her feet were closing their petals against the night and the silver trees looked suddenly ghostly and tortured, thin branches reaching towards her with sharp claws. The moon sailed behind them watching and something moved in the shadows. She turned and entered the cottage shutting the door firmly behind her.

‘I thought you were going to protest and insist on staying out there,’ the Doctor said from the fireplace. He was stacking logs in the flames, taking time to position each one just so, so that Clara flinched just watching, surely he would burn his hands? ‘It’s not good to stay out there after the suns go down, you never know what’s lurking.’

‘Don’t you? You made this place, surely you know what’s out there?’ she joined him by the fire.

‘Sometimes things surprise even me,’ he commented, ‘I come and go and things evolve, things change,’ he watched the fire for a moment, its light in his eyes and for some reason unknown to her Clara felt discomfort at the sight. She reached forward and slid her arms around his middle pulling him to her, turning him so the flames were no longer reflected in his pupils and his eyes shone blue again. After a moment he returned the gesture, cool palms sliding over silk covered hips.

‘Never mind that now, we’re ok here,’ she said, ‘Now how would you like to spend your evening, Doctor?’ her hand was already working its way up to the back of his neck, twisting curls in her fingers and encouraging him to bend his head to her. His mouth twitched into a smile and she felt his eyes roam over her face before he closed them and leaned forward, lips meeting hers. Their kiss was deep and slow and between them she could feel the press of his body as he held her tighter against him a sudden urgency running through him. She felt it flare in his mind and gasped at the intensity of his feeling, a desperation to hold her, claim her, make her understand. Clara pushed away his jacket and ran her hands down the satin back of his waistcoat before unfastening its buttons and insisting it went the same way. Now she could feel his heartbeats through his shirt, the movements of each muscle as his arms wrapped around her, hands flitting under the deep plunge back of her dress.

Suddenly it wasn’t fast enough, she couldn’t touch enough of him and she was reaching for his collar to tackle the buttons there. But he pushed against her and she was backing towards the couch under his strength, lips still locked together as he moved them, falling on top of her and between her legs. Clara gasped and ground up against the hard length of his erection and finally broke their kiss.

‘I need you,’ she panted, yanking the hem of her longs skirts upwards and trying to free herself from the material. His hands took the place of hers and with relief she saw that he was just as needy, growling as she rapidly undid his belt and opened his fly. And then he was between her legs again but she could feel a layer of silk still trapped between them, soaking now with her wetness and rubbing tantalisingly soft against their most sensitive areas. The Doctor made a noise of frustration and took the dress in his hands, a ripping sound coming from the hem as he found her body beneath. She felt him lift her weight and hitch her hips into the right position before he gasped painfully.

He stopped moving. Clara her heart racing and her skin flushed with desire tried to wriggle against him but he was backing away, the cream material of the dress rumpled between them, his shirt open slightly.

His shirt.

Clara stared in horror as the blood began to seep through it and then with quickened pace drenched the white cotton through. The Doctor gazed down, his hands held in front of him as though he was unsure whether or not to touch the growing stain.

‘Clara?’ he said not raising his eyes.

‘What is that? Doctor what is it?’ the panic in her voice finally caused him to look up and she saw fear in his eyes.

‘I think…’ he started but then a noise from outside made them both jump and from the corner of her eye Clara saw something move outside the darkness of the window. It scuttled and slithered in the gloom, a face briefly visible through the glass, pale and formless, before it vanished again like steam. The Doctor reached automatically for her hand his eyes on the now empty space where the thing had passed by. ‘Clara, this isn’t right…’ he said quietly.

‘We need to stop the bleeding,’ she said moving to get off the couch but he held her still. The first drop of blood fell from his shirt to the silk skirts gathered around Clara’s legs. It lay suspended on the sheen of the material for a moment before it was sucked down into the fibres, spreading its way in tiny capillaries through the unspoiled cloth.

‘No, we can’t,’ he said and looked back at her, ‘as soon as we stop it, it’ll start again…. Look.’ Clara followed his gaze down to the drop of blood on her dress and saw that it had grown much larger. But the bleeding didn’t seem to be coming from him anymore but from her, from an area just above her right hip. Her hand automatically went to the patch, the material there torn and ragged at the edges as though something had punched right through it, and her.

She looked up at the Doctor and her vision flickered. Now there was no blood and now…

… now there was darkness and a forest and he was kneeling in front of her, his face pale in a red moonlight, and now…

…now they were seated on the couch, the blood staining their clothes.

‘Doctor what is this?’

The forest and the red moon, the footsteps thundering after her, stumbling and falling, branches scratching her face and the darkness all around as one goal drove her on.

_I can’t die, if I die he dies, I can’t die…_

The forest.

Oh God they were still in the forest. She felt the pain start then, the searing pain around her heart and another, a burning at her side. Clara gasped and reached for him, aware he was paler than before, that he was slumped now against the couch, that the images were flickering in and out, couch, trees, couch, trees… darkness.

‘Clara, you need to wake up,’ he said and now his voice wasn’t nearly as steady, now it was laced with pain, ‘Wake up.’

‘I’m not sleeping… I’m not sleeping…’

‘You’re hallucinating,’ he seemed so far away, ‘Clara you’re hallucinating, the sting, it’s poisoning you, you’re hallucinating and you need to _wake up_.’

Another surge of pain, another flicker and this time the darkness lasted longer, the red moon above them, the image of the Doctor on his knees before her and the blood pouring from his chest. She reached out and placed both hands on his body.

‘Doctor?’

‘ _Wake up,_ Clara!’ and there was more urgency to his tone now as though he feared she would slip forever into the world of her hallucination, as though she might not come back. She tried to focus on his voice on the feel of him real beneath her hands, on his heartbeat.

Wait. His heartbeat.

‘Your heart…’ she said, her mind cloudy and straining to understand.

‘Never mind that now, listen to me, you have to fight the poison, stay with me. I know this isn’t a particularly nice place to wake up in but you have to do it, leave the vision and _come back_.’

His heart _beat_.

The vision again and the dress tangled around her body. She wriggled and the material just grew tighter, cutting into her legs. She had to get out, she had to wake up, for him. Because there was something very wrong, something she might just be able to fix if she could just…

‘Doctor…’ she was remembering and she was fighting to open her eyes to the dark world of the alternate dimension. She was struggling to focus on him and on that wound and that blood and on the feel beneath her palm of the uncharacteristic beat of his heart. His single heart, because she suddenly knew what that pain in her own chest meant, his own left heart was damaged beyond repair. But maybe she could help… maybe she could… god it hurt, this thing in her side, this burning, it hurt and she couldn’t think for it. She could feel it in every vein, every nerve, she couldn’t move. Long fingers of fire wrapping deftly around her lungs and dragging their curved nails against her throat. Fingers that plunged into the flesh of her stomach and plucked at her insides, cutting her and pouring poison into the tiny wounds.

Memories swirling now, mixed up and skewed by fear and adrenaline. But she had to remember. Remember before she found the Doctor. The Anushri chasing her through the forest and the fear and then this pain. But before that, before that when she had crashed through the rift, her body aching and her clothes singed. She had opened her bag, opened it and found the nectar meant for him and allowed herself a tiny sip to give her strength to carry on. And then…. She shook her head trying to shake the stabbing pains away…

_What did I do with it, did I put it back in the bag?_

Sipping at it and recorking it, looking around the forest as she closed the vial, placing it….

_No! Not the bag!_

In the vision she glanced down at the dress and from the folds of it saw something glow faintly, digging through the cloth, trying to find it in the tangled mess of shredded and bloodstained material.

The nectar, she’d put it in her pocket.                       

Her hand met with the glass vial and the vision vanished. The forest reappeared around them, the two Anushri soldiers blasted to one side by the sonic, and the area quiet. Then she saw the Doctor slump forward onto the ground as relief washed through him.

‘Clara, you’re back…’

But the burning pain was still there and she was struggling to catch her breath. She could feel the hallucinations at the edge of her vision trying to lure her back. She had to do this quickly. Clara pulled the nectar from her pocket and it glowed like a firefly in her hand, illuminating the clearing between them in gold. The Doctor laid eyes on it and instantly he knew what she was doing and she cursed the connection between them because she knew now that he would try to stop her. The rift had torn him apart, its fire punching through his body, but the Anushri had poisoned her and he would always put her first. And so they faced one another in the forest, amber light falling across their faces and casting shadows around them in long patterns. They both needed the nectar, but neither would accept it. Clara met his eyes and pleaded with him silently even as he tried to push himself back up from the ground and away from the vial, he coughed and a spray of blood littered the forest floor.

‘Doctor you need this…’

‘So do you…’

‘I brought it for you.’

‘Yes and now _you_ are injured,’ he was actively backing away from her, still unable to lever himself up from the ground, the power having totally left him after the effort of disposing of the Anushri. He came up against a small rocky outcrop and braced himself on it momentarily, before he collapsed again panting for breath, his legs folding under him and his forehead resting on one arm.

The image in front of Clara shimmered and their cottage came into view briefly. She shook her head and tried to clear her vision, tried to hang on to reality. He saw it and willed her again to drink.

‘You’re still poisoned,’ the Doctor said slowly, ‘It’s still in your system. That nectar has a powerful antidote to it, drink it.’

‘I’m OK…’ Clara’s head swam as she tried to move. She had to get to him, force him to drink if she had to. As much as he was weakened and was hardly at her best she thought she could do it, hold him down if she had to and pour it down his throat, catch him by surprise or…. She rubbed at her eyes, the visions lingering, blurring her sight, obscuring her thoughts and again he saw.

‘It will only get worse, it’s deadly, I’m surprised you’re not dead already, now please… just drink it.’ There was something in the tone of his voice that made her heart clench, something frightened and small that was begging her to just do as he asked.

‘I’ll split it with you,’ she offered and staggered forward a little. The burn in her side was getting worse and her ability to fight off the hallucinations was weakening.

‘No, you’ll need it all, I won’t risk you not getting enough. The poison has to be completely eradicated or it will just continue to work more slowly with the same end result.’

‘Then we buy time’ she said. Her head was pounding now and she wished he would just stop arguing and take it. Just take the nectar and drink it, so that there could be silence, so that the pair of them weren’t both standing there half dead arguing with one another, so that she could just retreat to the cottage and…

… the poison was luring her in, making unreality seem so welcoming but if she went there she would leave him and he would die. She had to stop wasting time.

‘No!’ he insisted. ‘We don’t know what’s going to happen next, if we will even get out of here at all, that poison would be a ticking time bomb,’ he fell into another painful bout of coughing and he closed his eyes against it, ‘Just… drink it.’

‘And you call me stubborn,’ Clara pulled herself forward a little on the forest floor, trying to keep her mind focused and her vision clear, ‘I did not come all this way just to have you die on me.’

‘I’ll regenerate, you won’t,’ he said sharply and it was enough to clear the fog in her mind. Just the idea of seeing that again, of hearing his scream as his body tore itself apart and rebuilt as a different man. No, not as long as she lived, she never wanted to see that again.

‘I don’t want you to regenerate!’ she cried out suddenly, ‘I’ve only just got used to this version, I _love_ this version and for the sake of a few sips of nectar we are not going through the regeneration thing again, we’re just… not!’ she had reached him now and edged herself next to the rock to look up into his face. He reluctantly opened his eyes and she was struck by how dark they looked in the shadows and how pale his skin was. There was blood still around his lips and she could hear the wheeze from his chest as she sat by him. She placed her hand on the right side of his chest. ‘Just do as you’re told,’ she said more softly, ‘You’re one heart down and I’m guessing that’s not a good state of affairs for a time lord.’

‘We can manage for a while.’

‘How long’s a while?’

He didn’t reply and looked down at her hand instead. His heart beat slowly against her fingertips. A flicker. The cottage… and then the forest again. Things moving in the darkness, real or unreal, she could no longer be sure. But _he_ was real and she had to hang on to that.

‘Longer than you can with that poison in your body,’ he said at last. ‘I was in a healing coma before… before I felt you here, I could try that again, I didn’t really get long enough to make much headway last time.’

‘We don’t have time, the TARDIS can only keep the rift open so long and there are Anushri hanging around, angry ones, you can’t just curl up in a ball and hope to heal before the rift shuts or they find us.’

‘Why did you come here?’ he asked changing the subject, ‘Didn’t the TARDIS show you…?’

‘I saw your message. I ignored it.’

A pained chuckle in his throat, ‘Should have realised you would.’

‘Yup,’

‘Well this is embarrassing… I was supposed to be dead before you saw that.’

‘You’ve already confessed your undying love, remember, you’ve nothing to be embarrassed about,’ she smiled and then waved the vial under his nose, desperately trying to ignore the pain in her body and the burn in her blood. She could feel the sweat standing out on her forehead, a dampness at her back, ‘Come on, please…’

‘Where’s the rift?’

‘I… I’m not sure… I got disorientated when they came after me… I don’t think it’s too far…’

He nodded as though he was finally going along with her.

‘Then drink the nectar and get out of here,’ he said.

‘I’m not leaving you here!’ her frustration raised her pitch.

‘I’m not asking you, Clara…’

‘Oh no you don’t get to order me about, not now, not ever, we don’t do that anymore remember? We look after one another not do what we thinks best for the other one without their say so. We don’t do martyrdom, you are not sacrificing yourself. I don’t care what you say you’re coming with me.’

‘I don’t think I can…’ he breathed and she felt his heartbeat slow further, something in his posture changed subtly and his eyes slid shut. ‘Not right now. I think…’ and she saw him sag slightly as he exhaled.

A tiny wisp of golden light left his lips.

_OhGodNo. NoNoNO!_

‘Doctor!’ she shook him hard suddenly oblivious to her own discomfort. ‘Doctor! Don’t you dare, don’t you bloody dare! You are drinking this, right now!’ Clara uncorked the little vial and reached for him, steadying his head against her shoulder and quickly pouring the vial’s contents into his mouth with a tip of her wrist. She held his head back for a moment to try and prompt him to swallow. ‘You’re not doing this, you are _not_ regenerating you hear me? You damn well swallow that, _now_!’

Clara froze as she heard something rustle through the trees behind them, and twitched her head in its direction briefly, but then his hands were on her face and he had pressed his lips to hers hard, the warm sweet nectar passing from his mouth to hers in one swift movement so that Clara swallowed with shock. It was so quick but so effective that it caught her completely off guard.

She pulled back angrily.

‘No!’ she pushed at him and watched in dismay as he fell back against the rocks at her touch. He groaned painfully and rolled slightly to one side. ‘No, you idiot! Why did you do that?! You needed it more than I did! There was light, regeneration light or life essence, whatever you call it, it was leaving you…. You _needed_ the nectar!’ She was up and on her feet in frustration, tears hot on her face already, ‘You bloody fool, I would have been fine, I would have managed…’

‘You look better,’ he said softly, ‘I think your wound has stopped bleeding too.’

Clara looked down at the area over her hip and traced her fingers over where the stinger had punctured her flesh. It was closing before her eyes, the concentrated nectar healing the wound and neutralising the poison. The burning pain was easing rapidly even as the one around her heart fluttered and reminded her of the Doctor’s injuries. She cast her eyes over him quickly, at the broken way he held himself against the rock and the slow pace of his breathing. She watched in fear with each exhalation for more of the golden light but none came.

‘Did you get any of it?’ she asked.

‘A trace perhaps, perhaps enough to halt the process for a while,’ he said vaguely. His voice was as she had never heard it before, soft, defeated. He sounded so tired. Clara looked at him and knew that there was nothing left in him to give, he had to have time to heal or she had to get him out and back to the Anushri world where there was more of that nectar. Neither thing was looking like an easy option right now.

‘Well we just have to work with that I suppose, and I guess I do feel better which means I can help you and you’ll be less inclined to argue with me…’ she said hoping her irritation would hide her fear. ‘I had a bag… with medical things in it…’ She stopped and looked around trying to remember which way she had come when she had crashed into the clearing, if there was any kind of path back, if she had any chance of finding her supplies while en route back to the rift. She squinted through the trees and towards the moon, no it had been the other way she was sure.

Something behind the branches caught her eye and she dropped down to her knees by the Doctor.

‘Give me your sonic,’ she hissed.

‘What?’

She felt around the ground by him brushing his cold hands as she did so, colder than usual she noted. She glanced at his face, eyes shut and motionless, he was barely responsive to her now, and tried not to think how close to death he looked. Her fingers found the sonic and she peered over the top of the rocks.

‘We’re not by ourselves,’ she whispered, ‘There’s more of them, the Anushri, more soldiers, I can see at least four, I think they’re headed this way.’

‘Then you need to _run_ ,’ he told her turning slightly to fix her with his stare.

Clara shot him an angry look.

‘Not a chance,’ she said.

‘Clara, for the Gods’ sake don’t argue, you can’t take them on by yourself and I’m not any use currently. You need to get out of here.’

‘No. Not leaving you, they’ll kill you.’

‘I’m already half way there,’ he said quietly. ‘You’re what matters.’ Clara took in his features, his sincerity and almost broke into pieces at the look in his eyes. The Doctor reached out his hand and wrapped his fingers around her arm, ‘Clara please, _please_ go, I…’ the pain gripped him badly then and she watched in horror as he was unable to bite back the cry that came from his lips. He clutched at his left side and the wound oozed through his spread fingers as he struggled to get his breath and the blood bubbled at his mouth. In front of them Clara could hear the Anushri moving closer to their ineffectual hiding place, their tread heavy on the forest floor and the clatter and buzz of their chatter increasing in volume. Another few paces and they would probably be able to hear the Doctor, his breathing a pained rasp that he was unable to control. She could feel him begging her with his mind now to get out, run, go, his consciousness fading in and out as the pain worsened, but she shut down his weakened thoughts with ease and focused instead on what was about to happen as the branches just feet away began to snap under the pressure of Anushri armour passing through.

She heard a buzz of interest between the front two soldiers, a moments triumphant silence and then the rush of bodies towards them.

Clara stood and aimed the sonic at the centre of the troop, terror coursing through her as she saw others join them from different parts of the forest, a dozen now, two dozen, they were pouring from the darkness in a veritable swarm, making straight for her and for the Doctor. Clara let off a blast from the sonic knocking two of them back and then turned to defend the Doctor, placing her body between him and his attackers, firing off another blast that took down too more. But there were too many, she wasn’t going to be able to stop them.

They descended on them both with grasping claws, sinking talons into the flesh of Clara’s arms even as she let the sonic off for the third time and another Anushri fell dead to the ground. She could see three of them falling onto the Doctor, frenzied and hungry for the attack, their green armoured bodies obscuring her view of him.

‘No, don’t you hurt him, get away!’ she was shouting at them as they hoisted her above the ground and she kicked out at their bodies and wrestled their grips. ‘Doctor! No! Don’t touch him, _please!_ ’

But they were dragging her backwards from the clearing, her screams echoing through the trees. There were dozens of tiny puncture wounds now in her arms and rivulets of blood tracked down her skin. She kept fighting them as they marched her onwards, the forest thinning and a stream coming into view and as she struggled she reached out to feel for the Doctor’s mind somewhere behind her.

The colours were faint but they were there and there was no way she would give up now. She tried to communicate with him to that effect but wondered if he were responsive enough to understand or if what she was seeing was a dream state or delirium. It was not the nothingness of the healing coma but it felt fragile, like a soft breeze might blow it into oblivion. Wherever they were being taken she would have to get to him fast, help him somehow. But how? The nectar and her supplies were gone and now they were being frogmarched even further from the rift.

Clara ceased her wriggling in the hands of the Anushri and decided to reserve her energy, there were too many and they were too strong for her to muster an escape right now. She looked instead at her environment, mapping the road they travelled, remembering features in the rather desolate landscape that might lead them back to the clearing and from there the rift.

And then she looked ahead and saw it.

It looked different but she knew it was the same place. The previously cool lush pools now filled with weed and slime, the graceful architecture still standing proudly but ill kept and worn, tiles and brick broken in places and missing in others. The ivory marble that shone so beautifully in the sunlight of the peaceful world she had just left now glowed red in the moonlight of this alternate and warlike dimension.

They were in the Anushri city, but this time they were prisoners, not guests.

 


	9. Chapter 9

They had come to a halt between the two tall towers that in the original Anushri world would stand proudly on either side of their ‘floaty’ ground floor ‘honeymoon’ suite, but here there was simply a marble space and a number of imposing looking soldier wasps standing guard. No flowers, no decorative art, just a rough hewn bridge over a stale pond and a few malnourished looking drones gathered in small groups around them. Clara was dropped rather unceremoniously onto the grubby stone by her capturers and promptly ignored as they turned their attention to the Doctor. For the first time since leaving the forest she managed to look at him and what she saw did nothing to reassure her.

He was still suspended between the arms of two Anushri, hanging lifelessly between their claws, new rips and bloodstains in his shirt and the sheen of a cold sweat across his forehead. Clara made as though to move towards him but was quickly pressed back to the ground with a sharp kick to her side. The Anushri in question could clearly see the damage to her top caused by the sting of his colleague and had struck out at where he deemed the most vulnerable place to be. When she didn’t shriek with pain she received a suspicious look and she quickly ducked her head and panted appropriately. If they considered her injured she was less of a problem to them and they might take their eye off the ball. Her head bent Clara tried to look around her, at their numbers and the environment and for any sign of how she might get herself and Doctor out of here but the place was rapidly filling with other inquisitive Anushri, their chatter and buzz increasing a notch or two as they approached the space between the towers, clearly their visitors were of great interest and some value.

A particularly large Anushri in resplendent green armour took a few purposeful paces towards the barely conscious Doctor and closed one claw like hand around his jaw, flicking his face back and forth in form of inspection before shoving him back into the grip of his soldiers. There was something about the satisfied look on his face that Clara did not like. He began speaking to a drone to his right, issuing some form of instruction and gesturing towards the Doctor. Clara’s eyes flipped between him and the crowd and this ‘General’ and she felt anger bubble in her throat, frustrated that she could not follow what was happening at such a critical time. Then the General turned to her and struck out his claws in instruction.

The soldiers at her back dived forward again and secured her in their grasp, one on each side. With a strange sound somewhere between the unfurling of a sail and the ripping of cloth Clara watched as two huge sets of wings tore out from under their armour and they suddenly propelled themselves directly upwards towing her with them. She was twenty, fifty, a hundred feet in the air before she could draw breath or register their talons digging hard into her arms. The crowd beneath her began to look smaller, the Doctor just a pale shape among them. Clara raised her eyes upwards and saw the marble stone rushing past her as they climbed the outside of one tower, the rapid sound the wings around her loud and painful, building pressure in her ears.

Then they were near the top and a huge arch punctured the stone beneath the decorative spire that crowned the tower. There was no door or glass just this opening and Clara remembered when she had first arrived in the Anushri world wondering how anyone without wings was supposed to reach the little room at the top. It occurred to her now as she was held hovering by the arch that they weren’t, not unless they were taken their by guards. Whereas humans and many other creatures kept their enemies in a dungeon, this species kept their prisoners high up, like a reverse oubliette, the only way out to jump to your death. The two soldier wasps swung back suddenly causing Clara to move pendulum like between them until momentum built and they flung her forward into the room. They lingered for a second outside inspecting their work as she landed amongst sawdust and muck, coughing and trying to wipe the dirt from her hands, and then they just as rapidly pitched back down to the base of the tower where their colleagues waited.

Clara moved to the opening and stared down below her but she was so high up and so far away little of what she saw would make sense. She glanced across at the second tower and from the inside saw the faint movement of a body, but again it was just too far, and too dark to tell if it was an Anushri or another unfortunate prisoner. She turned behind her to inspect the room, seeing no other entrance or exit and little furniture, a rough bed with no bedding, the sawdust on the floor. She cast her eyes about desperately looking for something which was usable or might inspire her to think her way out of the situation but the room was absolutely bare and gloomy.

The buzz of wings at the window drew her focus again. The soldiers were rising up again from the group below and this time they brought the Doctor, his body limp between them, torn shirt shifting in the breeze made by their movements. Clara watched as the soldiers brought him level with both towers and then appeared to debate between them which one he should go to. He hung suspended as they pointed and chattered and there was something too much like mirth in their tone for Clara who struggled to hold back her anger. If they would just bring him to her. She didn’t know quite what she could do for him but she had to be with him, the thought of him being in the opposite tower, unconscious and alone, or worse held there with some unknown creature filled her with dread. She found herself pressing hard against the stone of the archway as if getting just a few inches closer to him would help her to reach him and she called out his name waiting for a reaction of any kind, from his lips, from his mind.

‘Doctor!’

The solider on the Doctor’s right turned to her with interest and then let go of his prisoner’s arm causing him to drop significantly in mid air and Clara’s stomach to lurch. His colleague grumbled at him at hitched the Doctor tighter to him with his hitherto free hand. She could see the wasp leaning back trying to counterbalance the Doctor’s weight and the strained beat of its wings.

The first soldier was approaching her now, a bobbing, lazy flight that reminded her of wasps on late summer days, hovering with mild interest around her classroom, in windows and close to students, seemingly impartial but quick to sting if bothered or insulted in any way. It pulled up by the archway and eyed her coldly.

‘What did you call him?’ it twitched its head to one side and she drew back a little into the room.

‘His name is the Doctor,’ Clara said her eyes sliding past her guard to where his colleague was struggling with the Time Lord’s weight.

The wasp looked back at its friend ‘Powerful creature is he?’ it asked.

‘Yes, very…’

‘Hmmm,’ it buzzed, ‘he is badly injured and yet he lives… just…’ it looked back at Clara and down at the rip in her top, ‘As you were badly injured too…’ it leaned inside the arch and braced itself on the stone its wings still beating hard behind it, ‘I can smell it on you, our poison, yet you live… who are you, why are you here, what is _he_ to you?’

‘He’s my…’ Clara hesitated, defining the Doctor and what he was had always been tricky and no less so since their relationship had taken another turn.

‘Do you serve him?’ the solider asked, ‘Are you his drone?’

‘No! I don’t serve him, we’re equal!’

The wasp gave her that curious look again, ‘Then you are his mate?’

Clara rolled her eyes at him and replied in a voice dripping with sarcasm ‘You sound like something from Star Trek, yes I’m his mate, you see he’s an alien and I taught him the meaning of love.’

If possible the soldier wasps face darkened in anger and Clara quickly backpeddled cursing her attitude in moments of stress. ‘He’s my mate, we’re a couple.’

The wasp was deep in thought and looked, she thought, a little less cocky at this revelation. ‘You must be powerful indeed in your colony,’ it said, ‘The General should be made aware of this,’ he turned slightly and beckoned his colleague over, the Doctor still slung in his arms. Clara took a stumbling pace back as he was thrown forward and landed in a heap on the floor a puff of pained breathe escaping him. ‘If as you say you are the Leaders of your colony then you deserve something of the respect we would wish our King And Queen to experience should they be captured during the war.’

Clara was only half listening, bent as she was over the Doctor, smoothing back his grey curls, the blood thick in them and his skin freezing to the touch. She glanced up at the wasp.

‘Leaders of our…?’

And then images and words from the first Anushri world came back to her and she stopped mid sentence. The only couple in such a hive based civilisation was the King and Queen, couples just didn’t exist in this world unless they were the most important creatures in society. That made them important, she and the Doctor, important enough that a whole civilisation might pay a high price to get them back maybe? Clara wondered if she could suggest a ransom, persuade their captors that a whole world of Time Lords or Humans would pay highly to get them back safely. Then again this lot didn’t seem particularly merciful.

‘We will afford you the luxury of shared space, a meal. I shall see to it that we assign one of our drones to tend to you this evening.’

Or maybe they were. Clara raised her eyebrows, ‘You’ll do that?’

‘It is a courtesy,’ it said backing away from the archway and gesturing to its friend to follow, ‘A final show of respect before the executions tomorrow.’

Oh. Right the first time.

They dropped out of sight before Clara could respond.

XXXXXXX

She was by now absolutely certain that nights on this alternate version of the Anushri planet took twice as long. Clara shifted and tried to wake her left leg, curled under her body and slowly deadening over the last few hours as she cradled the Doctor’s head in her lap. She hadn’t tried to get him on the bed, such that it was, for fear of hurting him further or reopening his wounds and besides it looked dirty and the last thing he needed was an infection, so instead she leaned him against her thighs and let one hand softly stroke through his hair.

He was trying to heal, she could feel it, the emptiness of his mind as he allowed himself to fall into the most superficial level of a healing coma, but he could not afford in these circumstances to drift all the way down and she blamed herself for that as she knew his primary reason for maintaining some ability to respond to his environment was to protect her the best he could.

Stupid stubborn man.

But she couldn’t maintain her anger. What if this was her fault? He had been lying in the dark healing when she had come crashing through the rift and the forest, pulling Anushri soldiers after her, sending her fear in his direction and waking him prematurely from the one thing he could do to try and survive. She had woken him and he had sacrificed his coma in order to help her and it had led to this, their capture and his even more weakened state. They might never have come across him without her, they might have moved past him as he lay in silence and he might have healed.

‘Stop that,’ his voice sounded dry and painful, ‘This isn’t your fault.’

‘I led them straight to you…’

‘Clara…’ she heard the fatigue in his voice and dropped her argument.

‘How’s it going?’ she asked, trying to ignore the flickering pain in her chest and the ongoing waves of discomfort coming from his mind.

‘The healing?’ he tried to change his position slightly, pressing his hands to the ground and levering, but his muscles were weak and she felt her lap take the full weight of him again. ‘Not so good,’ he admitted, ‘I’ve lost a lot of blood, and I’m a bit short on… resources.’

Clara sniffed and looked about the dark little room as though something useful might materialise if she just willed it hard enough. She wished she’d been quick enough to realise when he had kissed her that there was more to his kiss than love and spat the nectar back at him. She could still feel it in her body a warmth that extended down to her fingertips and under each inch of skin. Already the marks left behind on her arms by the talons of the wasps that carried her up to the tower were fading, healing rapidly with the remnants of the potion still in her blood stream. If only she could transfer it to him somehow, kiss him back and let it pour into him where it was needed most. All that healing power, useless in her, floating in every cell of her body while he struggled to catch his breath and bit back little moans of pain. Unconsciously she tightened her arms around his shoulders and he winced.

‘Sorry… reason not to like hugging number fifteen, being mortally wounded,’ he muttered.

‘Not funny.’

‘Clara…’ he had that resigned tone again that she hated. The tone that said ‘I’m giving in.’

‘We need to think,’ she said hauling the conversation well and truly away from an area she was certain would just end up with her in tears and him feeling helpless. ‘How do we get you out?’

‘We’re two hundred feet up in an inaccessible tower with no equipment, we’re not going anywhere tonight,’ he tried to move again and Clara ended up helping him sit up and lean back against the side of the bed next to her. He began poking about in the folds of his sodden bloodied shirt and then after a brief examination of his wound let his head fall back onto the dirty mattress. ‘I’ll be lucky if I go anywhere tomorrow either,’ he said quietly. ‘Well except to the execution. Might actually be a mercy.’

‘Shut up, I’m not listening to that,’ Clara snapped.

The Doctor gave her a sideways glance and gently took her hand. ‘Sorry,’ he said quietly, gallows humour.’

She stared at him angrily.

‘Sorry,’ he said again, ‘It wouldn’t be a mercy anyway, I don’t think I actually regenerate if I get dismembered in any way so if it’s a traditional lopping off of the head number…’

‘Shut up!’

Silence beat between them for a moment until he squeezed her hand again and she forced herself to look over at him. The red moonlight cast itself across his features and she could see just enough to note the single tear which suspended itself on his lower lid, unshed. He was in pain and he _was_ frightened. He was doing his best.

‘What is that all about anyway?’ Clara inquired. ‘Execution? For what? What exactly have we done? Come on, you like working out puzzles, work that one out.’

The Doctor sighed next to her, ‘Nothing I suspect, we’ve done nothing. Nothing that we would consider a reason for such drastic action. But remember they are a country at war, driven by the need to demonstrate the power of their respective factions. From what I could make out on the journey over through the forest the thousand year war never ended here and the rebels have the very much upper hand. The good guys are a bit few and far between,’ he looked at her, ‘There’s a pair in the other tower for example, for the chop too I suspect, I caught a glimpse of their red robes…’

Clara picked at her nails. ‘So we fall through a rift and they just find us and think it would be a neat idea to use us as a demonstration of their power?’

‘It doesn’t help that we fell through the rift, they are a little superstitious… backward… they don’t know what a rift is just that there is this bright light in the forest and now two strange beings in their woods. Best kill them and be done with before they can use any of their odd humanoid magics… of course superstition can work both ways… we could use it to our advantage if…. ’ He trailed off and looked towards the arch.

‘What is it?’ Clara asked.

‘We’ve got some company,’ instinctively he reached across her body in a protective gesture but almost immediately flinched and had to retract his arm. Clara rubbed at his wrist and then took his hand, her eyes on the growing glow from outside the window. She thought she could hear the beat of wings too but not the heavy powerful beat of the soldiers who had brought them up there earlier, these wings beat irregularly and with effort. She could hear a ragged breathing behind them and then the bob of a pair of antennae became visible at the bottom of the arch. Clara scuttled forward a little on her knees to peer carefully over the edge.

‘Clara be careful,’ the Doctor warned behind her, but something told her there was no threat as the antennae became a head and the head revealed itself to be a familiar face. Scarred, more angular than she remembered it and with some damage to one of his huge black eyes, but familiar.

‘Eck?’

Clara sat back on her heels as the wasp that looked like Eck finally heaved its thin little body over the edge of the window and set down two bowls of nectar and a faintly glowing lamp. It glanced between them curiously, wringing its hands in an echo of the gesture Clara associated so well with her little friend.

‘Eck _is_ my name,’ it hummed in confirmation, ‘I have been sent to attend to you before tomorrow,’ he bowed a little bow that reminded Clara so strongly of the Eck she had left behind and of his kindness to her when she had thought the Doctor was dead that she felt her throat grow tight. This wasn’t Eck this was the alternate version and life had not been kind to the drone, she could see it in his haunted expression and skinny frame. He stood still, dressed in what must once have been an outfit made of crimson cloth but that now hung stained and uncared for from his narrow shoulders. His enthusiasm lost, his eyes cast down, he was waiting for instruction. When none came he gestured to the bowls.

‘Please, eat,’ he urged and glanced at the window as though afraid.

‘I know you Eck,’ Clara said softly.

‘That is not possible.’

‘It is. I come from another world very like this one but where your people took different paths. I know the you that lives there, but you were once the same as him.’

Eck made a low buzz. ‘I was once a different creature, yes, a better creature.’ His features looked utterly desolate.

‘What have they done to you?’ she asked.

‘Clara, this isn’t him,’ The Doctor said, ‘This is his alternate.’

‘This could have _been_ him, if life had been different,’ Clara corrected. ‘Look what he’s wearing, he was on the other side, but now he’s a prisoner like us.’

‘Not a prisoner,’ Eck said, ‘I serve the General now.’

‘But you didn’t always,’ Clara said, ‘That’s not the General’s colour,’ she gestured at the cloth.

Eck looked quickly down at himself with a hint of shame, ‘I… didn’t want to die,’ he said almost inaudibly, the words sticking at his throat. ‘I was weak.’

‘Not weak Eck, you wanted to live there’s no shame in that,’ Clara said.

‘Well that depends,’ the Doctor commented.

‘Be quiet,’ Clara snapped at him, but Eck had heard.

‘I serve the General,’ he said softly and moved to stand by the arch, still and silent. Clara glared at the Doctor, took a steadying breath and lifted the first bowl of nectar to her face. She sniffed at it experimentally.

‘You don’t happen to have brought your own particular brand of healing nectar, have you?’ she said glancing up at Eck, determined to force him to engage and trust somehow despite the Doctors occasional caustic remark. She saw something pass over his face and his small mouth open a fraction before he closed it again and resumed his sentry duty. ‘No didn’t think so…. The Eck I knew he gave me some before I came here, I don’t know where he got it from but I sort of suspected he made it himself…’

Eck shuffled by the window.

‘Your Eck must have been very talented,’ he said eventually.

‘He was… and very kind…’ Clara filled a spoon with nectar and held it to the Doctor’s mouth. She caught his inquisitive look and ignored it, bumping the spoon against his bottom lip insistently until he opened up and took the liquid. ‘Of course he was very modest too,’ she said, ‘he was the Doctor’s aide, very loyal.’

Eck looked past her at the Doctor.

‘The Doctor’s aide?’ his curiosity had peaked at that. ‘Your Eck?’

‘Yes, a very important position,’ Clara said, ‘And he helped me too, a great deal, he was a good… wasp.’ The Doctor rolled his eyes at her and she shot him a look back.

‘This other world you come from…’ Eck began, ‘Is it so very different from here?’

‘Yes very,’ Clara confirmed and watched as his shoulders slumped. ‘It’s very beautiful, very peaceful, the people are happy. There are no soldiers, no General and the drones lead good lives. There’s a Queen and King and the world is bright and lively and there are flowers and cool ponds… and when I first went there’ she grinned, ‘there was a play, a play about peace coming to the world and everyone looked so colourful… and you were so excited, you had a costume and you were proud to play your part… I mean the other you…’ for a moment he looked enchanted and then again his features fell into the shadow of the little room that was their prison.

‘I suppose it is so because of a great many events that cannot now be changed,’ Eck said sadly.

‘One great event mainly,’ Clara said and ignored the warning colours going off in the Doctor’s head. ‘The Doctor here brought them peace…’ she looked up at Eck, ‘he stopped the war, got rid of the rebels…’

If Eck’s multifaceted eyes could widen they would have but instead he wrung his claws together again and gazed at the Doctor.

‘The Doctor saved our world…?’

‘He did.’

‘And now there is peace?’

‘Yes…’

‘And I… I was his aide?’

‘Clara,’ a warning note in the Doctor’s tone, ‘This is an alternate dimension, events have overtaken… mmmph…’ she shoved a spoonful of nectar into his mouth.

‘Shut up,’ she hissed.

‘You’re misleading him,’ he whispered around his mouthful, ‘he wasn’t my aide when I..’ another spoonful was poured into his throat.

‘Timelines… time… all relevant,’ Clara said. ‘Events can still happen, just in a different order.’

A glare and a sense she was meddling with Time Lord Things.

Behind them Eck was watching their exchange with a far away look on his battered face. ‘The drones in the village spoke of the fire in the forest,’ he started, ‘When it appeared they said something would come from it, something that would bring change and hope,’ he swung his multilensed eyes back to the pair of them with childlike excitement. ‘You came from the fire, didn’t you? You came so maybe…’

‘Now let’s not get ahead of ourselves…’ the Doctor said, ‘yes we fell through the rift but as you can see I’m not really in a fit state to be negotiating peace or bringing an end to a war.’

‘But you could be couldn’t you,’ Clara growled at him, ‘You could be if you had some help, if you could heal?’ She turned quickly to Eck, ‘What do you think Eck?’

He buzzed nervously, ‘You are badly injured?’

‘Yes, he’s very sick.’

Eck shuffled forward a pace and picked up the dim lamp holding it over the Doctor’s body and leaning slowly down to inspect the wound. Clara hooked her fingers around the edges of the shirt and drew it back causing the Doctor to hiss in pain. Eck’s face remained expressionless as he assessed the situation and then he drew back.

‘They killed a lot of my people, they keep the others in locked rooms as prisoners, they keep some as drones to serve the soldiers, some they remove their wings,’ Eck said as he stood in the frame of the archway the lamp illuminating his worn features. ‘They think they are all broken, that they will not fight any longer, that they have no leader and no hope.’

‘There is always hope,’ Clara said softly and watched him nod slowly to himself.

‘You will help us?’ Eck said.

‘Yes,’ she said.

Eck glanced at the Doctor with a new light in his damaged eyes. ‘He will need the strongest nectar. I will bring it.’

‘Wait…’ the Doctor held up his hand, ‘there’s something else we’ll need too, it’ll be tricky but I think you’re up to the job.’

Clara cast him a worried look, and mouthed ‘No.’ Eck was on their side, he’d bring the nectar but she owed the little wasp both in this world and the other and she didn’t want him in any more danger. But Eck drew himself up proudly and turned fully to the Doctor.

‘What do you need?’ he asked.

‘It’s called a sonic screwdriver… I think your General has it.’

 


	10. Chapter 10

 

‘Please stop doing that Clara you’re making my head spin,’ the Doctor grumbled from his spot on the floor beside the bed. Clara stopped her pacing and stood instead fully in the archway looking out across the Anushri city. Eck had been gone some time and night stretched out darkly ahead of them, the minutes ticking by towards an unmarked time of execution.

‘Where is he?’ she asked, ‘I told you we shouldn’t have sent him for the sonic, he’s probably been caught trying to get to it, something bad could have happened.’ She turned and glared down at the Doctor, ‘If it has it’s your fault, we just needed the nectar, nectar won’t be guarded, not like the sonic will be. It’s a weapon, they’ll have it surrounded by soldiers trying to figure out how to use it.’

‘Clara the nectar alone won’t get us out of this situation,’ he replied tiredly, ‘For starters I don’t know if it’s going to do the job…’

‘It fixed me…’

‘It had an antidote to their sting in it and human physiology is at best simplistic compared with that of Time Lords. Clara, I’ve lost the best part of the left side of my chest, there’s a limit!’ his tone became suddenly irritated and laced with desperation. He quickly tried to pull it back but she had noticed. ‘There’s a limit…’ he went on more calmly but with the strain in every syllable, ‘To how much can be healed I suspect and even if it gets me back on my feet I’m not going to be one hundred percent.’

‘You’re drinking it this time and that’s that.’

‘Yes I’m not arguing about that.’

‘Well why are you arguing at all?’ she exclaimed.

‘Because,’ he flinched and sucked in breath, ‘because I need you to understand.’

‘Understand what?’

‘That this isn’t a run of the mill jaunt to an alternate dimension. We’re not going to save the world and pop back to the TARDIS in time for tea. It’s gone very, very wrong and…’ he struggled for a second to level his breathing as though he had spoken to much too quickly and drained his lungs. Clara watched as he braced himself on his arms, his accessory muscles working hard to help him draw in air and felt her snappishness dwindle back into fear. ‘I want you to understand,’ he went on finally, ‘that I might not be able to fix this one.’

Clara bit her lip. ‘You will,’ she whispered, afraid that if she spoke louder her voice would break. ‘That’s what you do, you save the day.’ He looked up at her then through the shadow of the little room and she watched as the dim lamplight shone in his eyes. He was the one thing she could always rely on, the one thing that would never let her down. ‘It’s what you always do,’ she said, ‘you’re my hero.’

He looked so sad in that moment as though he had failed her utterly that she had to look away from his gaze. It reminded her too much of the frightened little boy he had once been.

‘I’m not a hero, not this time, Clara, maybe this time you’ll have to get yourself out. And that’s why you’ll need the sonic.’

Clara wrapped her arms around herself and turned to the window and back again restlessly. She chewed at her lip and blinked back moisture in her eyes, her brow knitting. She could feel him watching her and also the faint caress of his mind against hers trying desperately to make her see. This was the lull before battle, when and if the sun chose to rise in this malformed alternate world the inhabitants would try to have them killed and the odds were stacked. No matter how plucky she might try to be in the face of another danger she had to admit the odds had never been stacked quite like this before. She dashed away a tear rapidly with the back of one hand and folded her arms again.

‘Clara,’ he said softly. ‘Clara, come here.’

Reluctantly she turned to him and then saw him gesture to her to join him. The simple motion made her almost fall to her knees with the need to hold him and be held. She came to his uninjured side and did her best to cuddle against him without aggravating his pain, finding his arm around her and his chin resting on top of her head.

‘What’s going to happen?’ she whispered.

‘I don’t know,’ he admitted just as quietly. ‘We hope Eck makes it back with something that takes the edge off this wound and something we can use as a weapon. We hope the Anushri prisoners have the strength to rise up and fight against the rebels and we all stand some kind of chance.’

‘And then?’

‘And then we hope I come up with a brilliant idea at the last minute to save us from what the bad guys have planned.’

‘Which is?’

‘Not sure, could be any one of a number of things, Eck might find something out while he’s gone,’ he fell silent and Clara leaned her head against the uninjured side of his chest, listening to the slow single thud of his remaining heart. She softly rubbed the material of his shirt under her fingertips and felt him twitch in pain.

‘Sorry,’ she said quietly.

‘Wasn’t you… it….’ He grimaced, ‘It’s just getting a bit… wearing.’ Clara glanced up at him and saw clearly for the first time the darkness around his eyes and sharpness of his cheekbones. He couldn’t keep going, he looked as though he had nothing left.

‘The pain?’ she said. He nodded shortly, closing his eyes against it momentarily.

‘Clara… if for any reason the nectar doesn’t work, or he doesn’t bring it…’

‘Shh…’

‘Listen to me.’

‘He’ll bring it and you’ll be fine. You’ll be like a new man. A new Time Lord. Except without any regenerating,’ she babbled on in a vain attempt to throw him off course.

‘Clara, listen to me,’ his voice dropped to a tone she could never argue with, an earnestness that made her heart ache, ‘If it doesn’t work you have to let me get _you_ out of here, distract them, trick them, assault them in some way but give you enough time to run.’

‘Doctor…’

‘Promise me Clara. If we’re taken to the execution and the nectar has been a bust I’ll be half dead by then anyway. Let me buy you time. Let that be the last thing I do for you.’ He reached up with effort and softly traced the contours of her face. ‘As your hero. Please.’

She wanted to argue with him, scream at him, boss him into doing what he was told and not giving up, tell him that he was just as, no, _more_ important than her, that they should save each other, that he should stop talking the way he was, but his eyes stopped her. His eyes and the feelings coming now from his mind, the sense that she was everything, _everything_ to him and that she would hurt him more somehow by refusing this last act. He had one thing left to give her and it spoke to her from the depths of his pupils, fragile, compelling, a last gift to the only person that mattered.

She nodded and felt her lower lip begin to bleed between her teeth as she strained to keep the emotion under control, but she couldn’t say the words.

_I promise._

Because it felt like betrayal. It just didn’t work when he tried to die for her, it was always supposed to be the other way around.

She felt him shift and leaned back to allow him room, watching as he brought both of his elegant hands to his lap. He stretched out his fingers before curling them into light fists and then grasped his left with his right. When they separated Clara saw that the ring he always wore now lay between his thumb and forefinger, its gem catching the lamplight and the gold shining brightly. Carefully he twisted it and the two bands that made up its body came apart taking with them a slice of gem each which when paired made up the full stone. He looked at her briefly, unspeakable sadness in that glance and then took her hand.

‘This wasn’t quite how I planned it,’ he admitted softly as one ring touch her fingertip, ‘But I think this is possibly as close to a wedding as I might manage,’ she heard his voice crack slightly and he pushed the ring into place, its band magically tightening to fit her when it touched the warmth of her skin. He placed its partner in her palm and waited, a heaviness in his posture that betrayed the effort it took him to control his pain. Clara opened her mouth to say something, anything to express the cloud of emotion around her heart but all that escaped was a painful sob and the first of her tears so she picked up the ring and holding his freezing hand replaced it on his wedding finger.

The Doctor cupped her face and pulled her gently to him until her mouth brushed against his softly and she felt the trace of his tongue lap against her bruised lip. He sucked lightly, soothing it and pushed his hand through her hair, holding her to him while all the time the pastel colours of his consciousness spoke to her of love, timeless and unending.

_Remember me._

It felt like goodbye.

 

XXXXXXXXXX

A noise came from the window. Clara was curled against the Doctor’s side, their left hands entwined in his lap, matching rings touching. Long hours had passed as they had waited for Eck to return and with each passing minute Clara had felt a little hope drain from her and a little life drain from the Doctor. His breathing was steady enough beneath her cheek but his body was growing colder, closer she knew to the ice-state the healing coma demanded from him, his only other option in the face of regeneration. She let him drift, conscious that he was struggling to heal and that any progress he could manage was desperately needed, but at the same time his silence and his soft mumbles of pain frightened her. The Doctor was always talking, usually at speed, to witness him so quiet seemed against the laws of the universe.

Outside the wind was picking up and in between bouts of silence would whistle and blast around their tower. Clara could see clouds rolling across reddened skies and the flit of bat like creatures in the darkness. If possible the prison was even less welcoming than it had been before, the fuel in the little lamp burning low and threatening them with darkness.

Clara rubbed her thumb over the back of the Doctor’s cold hand and looked down at their rings. Not how he had planned, their makeshift wedding, this binding of their souls. Not as he had imagined it would be. Not how she had imagined it either. Had she imagined it at all? Had she even believed she would be with him as she was now? It was all too brief and she had wasted so much time. Her mind fell into the misery that had drowned it when he had been torn through the rift, it was all going to happen again, he would be taken from her, and this time he would go where she could not follow.

The noise again, louder now, closer. Clara snapped into the present and pulled herself up, causing the Doctor to moan slightly and open his eyes. Suddenly they were tense and alert, the time for rumination finished and that of action close. The pair separated, praying for Eck, bracing themselves for soldiers, and neither came.

At first Clara couldn’t quite focus on the sound to define it, so faint was it against the breeze that blew around the tower. Then it came again louder but still unrecognisable. She slid to her knees and craned her neck towards the archway to try and catch a first glimpse of whatever it was before grabbing the lamp Eck had left behind and moving forward cautiously at a crawl.

‘For an inaccessible tower we get a lot of visitors,’ she mumbled glancing back at the Doctor who was squinting past the lamplight into the gloom. His hearing was a good deal sharper than hers she knew but even he seemed to be having trouble identifying the new guest. Clara shuffled forward a little way further and then the sound came again, more distinctive this time in its pitch and tone, a strange gurgle, a little growl of effort.

‘What the…?’ the Doctor from behind her, motioning her to move aside so that he could watch the thing arrive. He had a look of absolute disbelief on his face as well as something she could only describe as wonderment. Well at least it wasn’t fear or concern and it did something to remove the haunted look his face had been wearing. It was so out of context to see that curious bewilderment that she forgot for a moment the seriousness of their situation and allowed herself to smile at the boyish twinkle in his eyes. Clara sat back and looked between him and the window.

‘What is it?’ she asked curious.

Indeed the incoming visitor was of such interest to the Doctor that he was trying to lift himself just a fraction higher to get a better view. Clara waved him back into a seated position before he hurt himself, whatever it was would arrive sooner or later she could hear it puffing with exertion, brief little gasps and snuffles and then some scratching noises as it appeared to make contact with the outer walls and scrabble against them.

‘Whatever it is has claws,’ Clara said, ‘That doesn’t reassure me much,’ again she glanced at the Doctor who had stretched out one arm along the side of the bed and braced himself so he could lean forward. But it was his expression again that filled her with a sudden feeling of hope as a new light glimmered in his eyes.

‘Oh Clara…’ he said with barely contained excitement, ‘You didn’t mention… why didn’t you say?’

‘What? She looked quickly back at the window in time to see a stumpy black leg hook over the edge of the archway. It was quickly followed by another three, each ending in a paw. Clara’s eyes widened.

‘Fido?’ she gasped and raced for the window.

‘Fido? You actually called him Fido?’ the Doctor protested in a tone of disgust, but Clara was leaning down and grabbing the little creature too concerned it might fall to bother with the Doctor’s disappointment in her choice of name. She pulled the little Maltheus into the room and set it down in the centre of the floor.

She noticed two things at once. The first was that the Maltheus seemed to have dragged her missing bag all the way up to the top of the tower. The second was that he seemed to have grown wings.

Fido wasn’t bothered by his wings, he span in a circle at her feet and jumped on his multiple rear legs in joy. He had of course bonded to her and was beside himself with delight to see her again.

‘Um… Clara…’ the Doctor said, a trace of humour in his voice. ‘Would you care to explain?’

Clara looked at him with a slightly guilty expression.

‘The Anushri made him for you as a gift but he got out of his basket and bonded to me… and then sort of followed me through the rift. When I got attacked I assumed he’d been injured or worse…. But he seems to have followed me.’

‘Yes, well he would wouldn’t he?’ the Doctor laughed shortly and then clutched at his side, ‘he’s a Maltheus, don’t you remember me saying how loyal they are? Through hell and high water that thing will go for you now, a little rift in time is nothing,’ he chuckled and then said more seriously, ‘You are his world, Clara, the first face he saw.’ She glanced up to read his expression and saw a softness around his eyes that spoke volumes, the lines there creased easily into kindness and she thought she had never seen him look more beautiful.

He smiled, ‘I still don’t like the name,’ he added.

‘But how did he get up here?’ Clara said.

‘They’re pretty agile things despite all those legs making them look like deranged spiders but it’s a long way for a pup like that to climb…’ the Doctor sat forward as best he could, ‘Dangle that light over him a moment I can see something a bit…. Oh…’

‘Oh..?’ Clara asked from where she held the lamp suspended over Fido, she saw the Doctor point and tried to focus her eyes in the gloom where he directed. Fido’s back was oddly lumpy as though…

‘He has wings, Clara,’ the Doctor said in a slightly exasperated tone.

‘Wings? Do Maltheus have wings?’ she thought back to the images the Doctor had sent her of his boyhood pet. She couldn’t remember any wings. Maybe they were concealed, like a beetle?

‘Not the original ones no,’ he growled, ‘But ones genetically engineered by giant wasps seem to get a set for free when they come into existence,’ he passed one hand over his face, ‘this is what happens if you meddle with the forces of nature…’

‘Doctor…’

‘… gods know what other ‘improvements’ he has as well…’

Fido suddenly ruffled his wings loudly, shooting them out from his fur where they glimmered iridescent purple in the dim light. The Doctor groaned.

‘Unnecessary modifications only end in disaster…’

‘Doctor…?’

‘They might not have meant for him to have wings but you could say it’s a good thing,’ Clara suggested.

‘How is _that_ a good thing?’ he pointed at the pup. ‘He’s a freak of nature! Not even a freak of nature a freak of Anushri Terra and Fauna-formation Genetics!’

‘Doctor that’s cruel! We should be praising him. He got up here didn’t he?’ Clara said, ‘And he brought my bag.’

‘No offense Clara but a hand held mirror and some lipstick isn’t going to be of much use to us here.’

Clara’s glare threatened to set him on fire. ‘You honestly think that’s what I bring when I’m diving through rifts in dimensions to save my boyfriend? Make-up? How long have I been travelling with you now?’ Clara stooped and opened the bag bringing it and herself to his side again before tipping out the contents. A dozen medical looking supplies fell in the space between them including various dressings and potions but it was the technology she had taken with her on her journey that drew the Doctor’s attention, a small device that looked to Clara like a USB with a glowing diode stuck to the end and a larger egg shaped metal object which the Doctor picked up rather gingerly between two wary fingers.

‘Clara please tell me you weren’t running around with this strapped to your back?’ he said.

‘TARDIS said it would be fine.’ He glanced at her sideways and then carefully laid the thing down, looking between it and the USB.

‘Interesting,’ he commented. ‘Interesting choice of gear.’

‘Helpful interesting?’ Clara asked picking up on a change in mood. Fido wandered up to her and she absently placed a hand on his head.

‘Potentially, yes, If I can…’ the Doctor flinched suddenly and grasped the area over his wound pacing his breathing for a moment before he went on. ‘I can use this stuff but I’ll need the sonic to make a few alterations and we need Eck for that. It’ll all be much more useful when we know what we’re up against and he might be able to help there too if he’s been canny and learned anything tonight.’

‘And if Eck can’t get the sonic?’

‘You were the one who was so sure he could.’

‘I’m exploring options,’ Clara said.

‘Then I can use this stuff to get _you_ out, as we discussed… but not me, it won’t save both of us without some tinkering. It would work in an emergency but it means you escape, the captive Anushri and me, well we hold the line while you do….’

She dropped her gaze and chewed at the inside of her cheek, ‘Not going to happen,’ she muttered, irritated and sad simultaneously.

‘Right, not going to be an issue, Eck will bring the sonic,’ he agreed gently and squeezed her hand.

‘He will,’ she said.

‘Clara?’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m going to need a bit of patching up before I can do anything,’ he said.

‘Mmmhmm we need nectar, Eck’s on it.’

_Come on Eck where are you? Hell of a lot riding on you._

‘No I mean actual patching…’ he nodded towards the bandages that had fallen from the bag, ‘Could you?’

‘I know what you’re doing.’

‘Asking for my wound to be dressed?’

‘You’re trying to stop me from thinking.’

‘Will it work?’

Clara smiled sadly, ‘Maybe for a while,’ she conceded, ‘And you do need some dressings. The TARDIS informed me some of these have superficial healing abilities but I’m guessing that’s more for a cut or graze than for a great big hole ripped through you by an alternate dimension’s angry rift.’

‘Probably,’ he smiled and it was the first smile she’d seen in that dimension that gave her any hope, ‘Give it a go anyway.’

Clara knelt in front on him and slowly began to undo the remnants of his shirt, watching his face carefully for signs of pain as she tugged and peeled the sodden material from the gaping wound where it had adhered in clotted blood and damaged blistered skin. In the poor light it was hard to tell the extent of the damage and she was suddenly grateful for that afraid that if she saw the depth of the cavity or breadth of the burns on his skin she would break down completely. What was clear however was the considerable amount of pain he had to be in as he bit down on his lip when even her most gentle movements aggravated him. Once or twice he reached a hand to her wrist and stopped her briefly needing a moment to regain control, she noticed that each time he did he looked away from her in shame for his inability to hide what he was feeling. Once as she was undoing a fresh dressing ready to apply she thought she felt a tear land on the back of her hand.

His shirt removed completely and wound cleaned as best as Clara could manage she began to apply dressings and bandages liberally to the area, keeping him distracted with a litany of nonsense including tales from her brief spell in the brownies where she earned a first aid badge and the time she wrapped her cousin in so many bandages he fell over and needed a real bandage applied to his head. It was a sign of not only his weakened state but his need to keep her calm and level that he allowed her to chatter on, his usual sarcasm dulled. He watched her with dark eyes as she worked, memorising her features in the lamplight and occasionally touching the back of his hand to her cheek or hair.

She barely noticed the change in the sky until she heard the wings outside the window and turned with a now familiar knot of fear in her gut to await the latest visitor to the tower. The red moon was fading and the sky had turned from blackened crimson to a paler shade of pink that poured in through the archway and fell across the Doctors facing casting grey shadows on his already grey skin. Clara grasped his hand and watched from the corner of her eye as he adjusted the blood encrusted edges of his shirt in readiness to whatever was approaching, it was an odd little moment of vanity that felt bittersweet in her throat.

The wing beats quickened and the figure of a wasp appeared over the threshold of the window. With the rising sun behind it, it was hard to see at first just who or what it was and what it carried but as it landed on the sill its body blocked the first rays of morning and its damaged face broke into a smile.

Eck held a little basket aloft in triumph.

‘I have the nectar,’ he said and Clara grinned. ‘The strongest that can be brewed.’ He stepped down into the room and knelt before the Doctor, ‘And of course I have your weapon.’ Eck opened the basket and withdrew the sonic screwdriver. ‘That took a little longer…’

‘I knew you could do it, Eck,’ Clara flung her arms around his skinny frame.

‘Listen to me,’ he said, ‘They will be here soon, we haven’t much time,’ he watched as the Doctor took the devices from Clara’s bag and began to work on them with the sonic while Clara uncorked the bottle of healing nectar and replaced the screwdriver in his hand with it temporarily, urging him to drink first sonic later. He grumbled and knocked it back before crooking his fingers at her impatiently for his weapon.

Eck resumed his urgent message. ‘There are things you must know, things that will help, ’ he said, ‘I think we can win this.’

The sudden confidence in the little wasp’s voice made them both look up in surprise.

 


	11. Chapter 11

 

‘Win this?’ the Doctor said echoing the wasp’s words.

‘Oh yes,’ Eck said quietly, ‘I think so, I think we can crush the rebels and get you home, but first you need to understand what they will be attempting to do at this execution ceremony, the numbers of them and where they will be…’

‘All details I expect you have managed to obtain over night?’ the Doctor eyed him with a mixture of admiration and respect. He placed aside the empty vial of nectar and continued to fiddle with the devices from Clara’s bag. She watched him from the corner of her eye, was he healing? It had been almost instant with her… was he feeling it now?

‘I have been busy,’ Eck admitted with a wry smile. ‘There are many of us around the city, in all quarters, in all homes. We work as drones to soldiers and rebels who have fared well in this war. They have long since ceased to notice us, harmless downtrodden brethren.’ He paused and smoothed the material on his old red robes with affection, ‘But we are still tied together it seems. I underestimated the desire for change, the willingness of my people to fight on if an opportunity should arise… and word spread fast through the streets and houses last night. There are more of us than even I remembered.’

Eck looked up at the Doctor and Clara and in the clearer morning light she could see for the first time the details of the scars he wore on his face. ‘I was never a soldier by birth,’ he explained, ‘not like the ones they force from the Queen’s body now. I was a healer, a potion brewer, a herbalist. My abilities lay in peace but I had to become a soldier through war and it was a violent and horrible thing that left its mark on me. When they captured me they offered me the choice of death or slavery and I felt myself to be a coward for choosing to live but now I see perhaps there was a different path ahead, perhaps it was the right decision and there is no shame. I am no soldier, I have no desire to be but though it might not be in my blood to kill, I can no less do the job and so can my kind. They underestimate us. To end this war, to drive the rebels back and free our people and our Queen, that may be the true purpose to all of this; the choices we made, the fire in the forest, the other Eck in another world and you.’ He looked at the Doctor, ‘All of this has come together for a reason.’

‘Sometimes that happens,’ the Doctor said softly, ‘Sometimes timelines, events, people, they follow you until they fulfil themselves. ’ His focus was on the egg shaped device and the tip of the sonic as it buzzed and hummed the alterations to the equipment but his tone spoke to Clara on a very personal level. She had followed him through time, her face, her voice and now finally they were united.

_Don’t let us be separated._

‘Do you feel any better?’ Clara asked unable to contain the question further. He looked just as pale, just as shadowed as before except now his brows knit in concentration and the lines on his face seemed deeper.

‘I feel focused,’ he said non-comittally, ‘Eck tell us what the set up is today.’ Clara felt him bat away her enquiry telepathically, rapidly building a wall in his mind. The nectar she assumed wasn’t working.

‘The General has organised these events before,’ Eck stated with barely concealed emotion, ‘Public execution of those he deems troublesome or at times long serving drones who have done little to deserve such treatment except that they wear the royal red. He wishes to make a regular demonstration of power to keep his subjects in line.’

‘His subjects? Surely the subjects belong to the Queen and King,’ Clara said.

‘Normally yes but they have not ruled here for many years in anything other than name. They are imprisoned, used as bargaining chips with their people who fear for their welfare out of ancient loyalty. The Queen still breeds but her children are raised according to the General’s need for soldiers or drones. They are figureheads only. They will be in attendance today but you will soon see what I mean.’

‘So every now and then the General puts on a bit of a show to remind people who is the boss?’ The Doctor said never removing his eyes from the device in his hands. Clara noticed his fingers tremble as worked on its intricate technology and saw him pause to bite down hard on his lip and focus hard again. He was still in pain.

‘Yes and today will be exceptional. He had ordered that the theatre be floated in the great pool and that everyone be in attendance.’

‘The great pool?’ Clara thought back to the evening she had spent with the Doctor in the beautiful pagoda by the water and at the way she had laughed and eaten and kissed him as the play had unfurled before her. ‘Yes I remember it,’ she said sadly.

‘Different in your world,’ Eck said as a matter of fact, ‘Here it is a dark place over run with weed and slime. The air is thick, the creatures dwelling in it dangerous. I imagine the pool you saw was a place of beauty.’

‘It was.’

Eck smiled and reached out one claw to take hers. There was an uncharacteristic strength in his movements now, she noted, he didn’t tremble or hesitate. ‘Perhaps it will be so here too,’ he suggested, ‘When we end the war.’ Clara managed a smile and felt a little surge of pride for her friend but she glanced back at the Doctor and felt her face fall a little when she noticed the sheen of fresh sweat on his brow. Eck followed her gaze.

‘Sometimes the nectar takes a little while,’ he said in an attempt to comfort her, ‘The Doctor comes from a species I am not familiar with as a healer, it’s possible it will take longer.’

_What if we don’t have longer…?_

_What if it doesn’t work at all…?_

_What if…?_

Clara looked down at the ring on her hand and forced her mind to hush.

‘Eck,’ the Doctor urged, his gaze averted from her despite the tumult of her distress most likely signalling like a beacon in his head, ‘Details…?’

‘All will be in attendance and they will likely want to make great show of their most interesting prisoners,’ Eck glanced between them, ‘But you will not be alone, remember there are many of us now on your side, almost invisible to them because of who we are. They will take the best of the seats, be closest to the execution but it only serves for them to be surrounded by us and they will not even see us gather in the darkness of the pool.’

‘So we have an army of slave drones in robes versus the elite rebels in armour,’ the Doctor surmised, ‘But we also have a certain element of surprise, some very advanced technology,’ he waved the device in his left hand, ’and the moral high ground. The odds are evening up I think,’ he smiled, ‘I’ve had worse.’

Outside the window Clara could hear the beat of heavy wings and her Anushri companion moved to look through the arch.

‘The guards will take you one by one to the pool,’ Eck said his tone suddenly that of the little drone sent to serve them by his General Master. Behind his silhouette a few metres out in the air two soldier wasps rose into view, their green armour glistening. ‘Clara, you are to go first.’

‘The warm up before the main event,’ the Doctor said bitterly. Eck stepped back respectfully from the window and took up his position to one side, head bowed, the picture of servitude. His large black eyes flicked up once to Clara’s and then he looked down once more, perfectly still. The wing beats outside reached full volume and the buzz of conversation could be heard. They were coming.

Clara suddenly realised she still had little idea what to expect, what the Doctor had planned and what she should do when she reached the stage. She opened her mouth to protest, reluctant too to leave the Doctor when the nectar hadn’t yet worked but she felt his hand clasp over hers hard and like a bolt a single though fired into her mind from his.

_Trust Me. Go._

The soldier wasps landed on the sill of the archway and reached for her, their hands binding her wrists in chains and hooking them around her ankles. The metal dug hard into her skin and she struggled against her guards taking her but they yanked hard on the links and she fell forward into their grasp. They fed out a length of her restraint and then pulled it back again suddenly, playing games with her captivity as they took off.

It seemed an awfully long way as Clara tried to remember where the great pool was relative to the towers, a distance made longer but the insistent dig of claws into her upper arms and the relentless bang of wings around her head. The soldier wasps were swooping and dragging her with them, talking amongst themselves and more than once she thought she might be propelled into the side of a building or through a tree. She tried to look back, once, twice, three times, keeping her eyes open for the Doctor but more often seeing the Maltheus fluttering through the tree tops, his purple wings catching the light but his dark body obscuring him in the shadows from the gaze of the soldiers. He was following her just as the Doctor had thought he might, and nothing would stop him, his wide eyes fixed on her face and all his energy poured into keeping up with the much bigger creatures that carried her. His absolute devotion was completely evident and Clara felt a pang of guilt that his first few days of life had been so utterly traumatising. Except he didn’t look traumatised, as long as he was near her he panted along with a grin on his face and no expectation of anything different. That made her feel guilty too.

After a few minutes of travel Clara looked back again and to her relief this time she saw the Doctor, suspended between his own two guards, flying a few hundred metres behind her. He was too far away to see detail but it reassured her to see and feel him there as she looked back at the approaching pools.

So they were nearly there, the stage having been floated and a mass of waspish bodies gathering at its sides to watch the show coloured green and resplendent in the limited sunlight. Above the pool a steam of mist rose from the fetid waters and blocked some of the light. As yet there was no sight of the red drones Eck had promised. Would this all go to plan at all?

Clara glanced back again and the Doctor was gone. Frowning she focused on his mind again and felt it grow further away. He had been directly behind her, they had a common destination, where was he? What was he doing? She wished they had had longer that morning with Eck to firm up their plans, she hated it when things were done on the hoof, it went against her controlled nature for the Doctor to be spontaneously changing his mind about events especially when his life was at risk. But she blinked and there he was again between his two green guards just as before, emerging from the branches of a tall tree just as before, except the reassuring presence of his consciousness was fading. She couldn’t work out if their link was fading or if he was.

_Come on stay with me._

Her stomach was doing somersaults and she couldn’t simply blame the mode of transport she was currently having inflicted on her. The very real fear that the healing nectar had done nothing was growing larger by the second and Clara felt a rush if bitterness. Why? It had healed her totally. The tiny amount he had retained when he had passed the original back to her in a kiss had helped him a little so why didn’t a whole vial of the stuff help him now? Maybe the damage was just too much and it was too late, maybe as he had said he just didn’t have the ‘resources’ any more, too much blood lost, too much life essence drained. It was unfair and cruel and he hurt. He hurt…

Clara focused on her heart beating hard in her chest, she had grown so used to the feeling of pain which softly surrounded it as an echo of his, now she hesitated and held her breath trying to locate it.

The pain was gone.

She looked back again at the limp pale body which hung between the wasp soldiers. At the bloodstained shirt he wore and at the silence of his mind. He wasn’t moving, he wasn’t hurting.

‘No!’

The free arm of her escort cut through the air and belted her hard across the face, knocking her head back and then she was wrestling in their grip drawing curses from the pair as she fought them. Their response was to swoop suddenly lower over the floating stage and with angry force send her spinning and crashing to the ground, landing close to her and kicking out with their limbs into her back and stomach as she tried to curl into a protective ball.

‘Quiet, prisoner!’ the first of them spat.

‘You’ve killed him, you’ve killed him!’ Clara scrabbled away from them and wiped blood from her brow, ‘I can’t feel him, he’s gone, you’ve killed him!’

The two looked as though they might lash out again but then stopped quickly and drew back.

‘Telepathic…’ a low voice queried from behind, ‘you sense his death?’ Clara spun and faced the General, a towering and heavily built soldier wasp whose armour bore the marks of war and of bloodshed in dents and scratches.

‘I sense his pain, and his mind and I can’t feel either!’

The General regarded her coolly with his dark impenetrable eyes. ‘A shame,’ he said at last, ‘He was by all accounts an interesting and strong creature, he would have provided us with much entertainment,’ he spoke to the gathering crowd of green Anushri as though asking their opinion, ‘but never mind, there’s still plenty to go.’ His face cracked into a twisted smile and Clara felt herself heaved up again by her guard and dragged to one side of the stage. ‘Soldiers, drones,’ the General was saying, ‘Please respectfully welcome… your Queen and King.’

A jeer went up from the gathered crowd and all eyes turned to the hillside across from the water where in a better world the royal pagoda had sat resplendent. In this dimension Clara could see a huge cage being rolled forward by a set of red robed drones, heads bowed. She was trying to see beyond them to check for others or clues to the whereabouts of Eck’s makeshift army, but then then creatures within the cage sent up a pitiful noise and she looked back in time to see a green Anushri soldier tormenting its incumbents with a sharpened pole.

The Queen was unrecognisable from the generous rubenesque figure that sprawled in the pagoda a few nights before. In this world she was a thin empty version of herself, her eggs still formed inside her but no movement now in her abdomen and no shine to her skin. She was in pain, that Clara could see and he lay on her front, gripping the floor of the cage with weakened claws, attempting to keep her body from the hard floor. Her once vibrant stripes were dulled and marked with raw areas and throbbing ulcers and her face was gaunt and colourless. There were no robes or finery, just the sharp contours of her thin limbs and shoulders barely covered by red rags. By her side her tiny husband sat as thin and uncared for as she, the muck from the floor of their shared cage ground into his skin and clothing.

‘Dear God,’ Clara muttered horrified, a sickening fear in her gut.

‘Behold, behold,’ the General continued, ‘Our royal pets! Our guests of honour! For today we execute those who support them still, those who have failed to learn the lessons taught by others before them, that the red wasps of the Queen will never regain their power and that the rebels control the future of the Anushri!’

A cheer went up from the crowd.

‘And today we have a treat for those of you loyal to the cause. We, the rebel leaders have once again proved to those who doubt us that we are fit to rule. That we alone protect the Anushri from outsiders, from evil, from fear and disease and death. When the fire began in the forest, there was fear, fear that from that fire evil would spread…’

Clara stared at him in disbelief, his words the opposite of what Eck had said of his people who had believed hope would come from the rift. Then she remembered what the Doctor had said about superstition and its ability to be used for either cause. Here was the living proof.

‘Well something did come from the fire,’ the General said. There was a collective inhalation of breath from the crowd. ‘This!’ he pointed in Clara’s direction, ‘This monstrosity and her mate, fell into our world from the flames and brought with them foul danger.’ Clara felt the multilensed dark eyes of the crowd turn on her as one and swallowed hard. There had to be a hundred of them there now, maybe more, each fully kitted out in armour and weaponry for the occasion. Beyond them the swampy pool stretched darkly obscured by mist, she had no way of telling how many drones, if there were any, were out there as Eck had instructed. She felt suddenly very alone.

‘But we captured her despite their efforts to outrun and deceive us, we defeated them before they set foot in our city, and now… now we demonstrate the ultimate power to protect our people. Today we execute these mutants from the fire alongside any other wrongdoers to our cause.’

An enormous cheer went up as he finished until the floor of the stage shook with the thunderous applause and shouts of delight. The General apparently riding on a tidal wave of adrenaline reached between two of his soldiers and dragged out a young looking serving wasp dressed in red and gripping him between the shoulders raised him high above his head. Clara watched in horror as he showed his prize to the increasingly excitable crowd and then with a swift motion pulled out a sword from his belt and plunged it hard through the thorax of the wasp.

Hysteria broke out amongst the green Anushri who stamped in unison on the stage and began to chant but as their movements became more rhythmic Clara suddenly became aware of a growing expanse of red emerging from the pool behind them, a rising up of rank upon rank of enrobed drones, the noise of their wings obliterated by the frenzied calls of their enemy and a cold focus on their drawn faces. Almost silently they moved as one to circle the stage, their presence ignored by those who felt they had seniority and power, by those to whom they were invisible. Clara watched as the atmosphere slowly began to morph, as the chanting died down and as the rebels turned slowly to face the red sea of tattered robes and scarred faces and justice waiting to be served. The green drew their weapons and readied their stance and as they took their positions two more of their kind prepared to join them, falling gracefully from the sky on narrow wings, green armour buffed to a high shine and weapons sheathed at their hips; and between them the body of the Doctor crumpling softly to the ground, weightless, featherlike and silent.

Clara lurched in his direction and her captors held her firm as she wriggled against her bonds.

‘Let me go to him! Let me… go!’

Still that emptiness in her chest, the hollow darkness of their joined mind, she reached out and felt nothing, touched nothing as he lay face down and motionless on the stage, his silver hair ruffling in a slight breeze.

‘Doctor!’

She was vaguely aware of the press of the red drones against the circle of green Anushri, pushing the soldier wasps together in the middle of the stage, containing them to a specific area by the sheer volume of the queen’s wasps. Poorly armed as they were they outnumbered the soldiers three to one at least and there was an energy within them that felt threatening and hard. At the centre of it all the Doctor’s body lay unnoticed by anyone but Clara.

‘Please! Doctor!’ Finally her two guards grew more concerned by the drone presence than by her cries and pushed her forward to the floor, taking out their weapons and joining the ranks of their kindred to ready themselves for whatever might come. Clara stumbled forward trying to reach him but her bindings made her movements clumsy and she tripped, landing hard on one shoulder. From her place on the ground she tried to peer at such an angle that she could see the Doctor’s face but her neck wouldn’t twist far enough and she kicked against the floor trying to push herself forward.

Then everything happened too quickly.

She saw the Doctor’s escorts step towards her in unison and the strange unexpected flutter of red robes beneath the edge of their armour. She heard a familiar voice in her ear instructing her to follow, not to struggle, as they gripped her arms lightly and pulled her away from the centre of the circle and she saw the Doctor slowly rise to his knees unnoticed by the green Anushri, a faint smile on his face that was tinged with something bittersweet. The distance between them was growing as she watched and Clara felt her heart tug and pull. He was alive but…

_Don’t you send me away, Doctor, don’t you send me away again._

The blood had soaked through his shirt and his new dressings and his skin was pale but he stood as tall as he had ever done and his movements were graceful as he reached for the egg shaped device she had seen him work on in the tower. He pulled it from his inside pocket and held it aloft with something like triumph in his eyes before he looked back at Clara, watching her for a moment as she was pulled through the ranks of rebels and out into the safety of the red drone army. He fixed her hard with his ice blue gaze and spoke in a calm tone which reached her even through the commotion and belied the urgency of his words.

‘The rift is closing, remember your promise. Run.’

He raised his hand further and never taking his eyes from her he threw the device with a sudden movement to the ground at his feet.

The stage exploded, taking all who stood on it with it.

‘No!’ Clara screamed and wriggled in the grasp of the two wasps on either side of her but they only pulled her harder backwards through the crowd of drones. The sea of red closed over her view of the stage and for a few moments everything was blocked from her vision. She hit out hard at the wasp to her right as best she could and the chains at her wrists lashed him across his already marked face.

‘Stop, stop!’ the voice pleaded with her, ‘Clara, stop!’

It took her a few seconds to orientate to it but when she looked at the face of her guard she saw the familiar damage to his eye, the angles of his features well known to her both in this dimension and the last.

‘Eck!’

‘We have to get you out of here,’ he said, motioning his companion to release her other arm. The pair of them were stripping away their green armour and dumping the heavy equipment to one side, beneath it their red robes looked bright in the daylight.

‘No, didn’t you see, didn’t you _see_?!’ Clara gestured frantically back towards the floating stage, ‘He blew it up he destroyed it, he’s still _in_ there!’ her eyes tracked over the area desperately seeking some sign of the Doctor. What was clear was that chaos now fell in flaming showers over the area, that the red drones and the green Anushri were embroiled in all out war on the stage and that the numbers of the green were dwindling surrounded and crushed as they were by the red, burnt as they were by the fire. The noise was incredible, both that of the soldiers and that of the destruction that burned all around.

Flames rose high and orange above the pool, debris alight and raining down over the water in floating scraps on the breeze and plummeting husks of wreckage. The wind whipped up black smoke and mixed it with the steaming mist of the pool casting clouds across the area and hiding the battle.

‘Clara we need to move,’ Eck insisted, ‘Didn’t you hear? The fire in the forest is dying, your way home is closing.’ He moved to guide her towards the forest but she pushed past him straining to see into the fire.

‘No, how can you do this? How can you leave him? He made you didn’t he? He made you promise…. You betrayed me Eck!’

‘Clara, please!’ He clasped her bound hands in his and pulled insistently. ‘He will follow…. If he can…’

Her frightened eyes were reflected back to her a dozen times in his dark lenses, the fire burning orange gold behind her and framing her face.

_Remember your promise._

The ring heavy on her finger.

_Let this be the last thing I do for you._

She glanced back and Clara thought she saw his figure at the centre of the blaze, tall and dark and devoured by flame. A gust of wind, a flare of exploding burning heat, so intense she could feel it on her skin from where she stood, and the Doctor’s silhouette was gone, consumed by fire. Eck pushed her on towards the forest, the sound of her own scream deafening her.

 


	12. Chapter 12

They didn’t get far before Clara wrestled herself free of Eck’s grip. She had to go back, despite her promise, she had to see for herself even if the truth seemed so obvious. She had watched the flames consume him at the centre of the stage and the connection in their minds was gone but Clara had travelled with him long enough now to know that tricks could be played on eyes and brains and that until she held his body in her arms she would not believe he was gone. She pulled away from Eck’s guiding hold on her and began to move back through the trees.

‘Clara!’ he called, ‘Clara this isn’t what he wanted, he said to take you to the rift, he will follow!’

‘How can he follow? Didn’t you see the fire? He’s in the middle of that, he’s burning and I can’t…’ she stumbled over branches her chains catching them, ‘I can’t leave him to that… ’

‘It’s what he wants! What he needs to do!’

‘Well he’s wrong!’

‘Clara, wait!’

‘No, he doesn’t get to do this, he doesn’t get to sacrifice himself,’ she was crying as she struggled through the vegetation, ‘He doesn’t get to die in the middle of someone else’s war, not now, not now that he…. He….’ She couldn’t find the words, her throat closing and the syllables morphing into sobs.

_He doesn’t get to die now that we have each other._

‘Clara no! Wait you have it all wrong! Clara!’ Eck’s voice changed, suddenly more panicked, the shambolic noise of his limbs tearing through the undergrowth after her, tripping and catching himself in his hurry to reach her.

‘I have to get to him, I don’t care if they try to kill me, I have to see him.’

‘Clara!’

‘He’s there, on the stage, I saw him in the fire, he’s there and he’ll be hurt… or… or…’

‘Clara _no_ , wait…. _That wasn’t him_.’

Clara froze.

She stopped and turned to find Eck rushing towards her, fear on his face. He came to a halt a few feet from her, panting from exertion.

‘What do you mean, ‘that wasn’t him?’’ she asked cautiously.

‘Oh Clara, I thought he’d told you, I thought he would have said… I’m sorry, I’m sorry I should have…’ the newly confident Eck was suddenly shattered and ashamed.

‘What? Eck, what hasn’t he said?’

‘The device…’

‘The egg- thing?’ she shook her head, ‘Eck the TARDIS gave me that before I came here, for ‘emergency use only…’ it’s an explosive.’

‘No, not that one… the other, the smaller device… it had a light… he adjusted some of its settings…’

Clara pictured the little USB shaped thing with the diode. The little USB shaped thing the TARDIS had given her as a means of looking up useful information about time and space and dimensions, it had access to the TARDIS libraries and control system and was essentially a portable version of its information banks. And of course what better way to present that information than as…

‘Interface… that was the interface!’ Clara cried suddenly, ‘He used its hologram as a distraction, that wasn’t him at all it was a projection, a hard light projection and he attached it to a bomb.’

Eck, out of breath and leaning on two of his legs nodded somewhat frantically, ‘He wasn’t in the centre of the fire,’ he said. ‘It was just his image. It was a diversion and a way of getting the explosive to the middle of the enemy.’

‘Then where is he? What’s going on? How did the interface get there?’

‘He was picked up by the Anushri guards as planned,’ Eck said, ‘I was there in the tower when they came but I’m just a drone to them, they suspected nothing. They flew him half way here believing he was mortally wounded and would put up no resistance. They were sloppy and he timed his attack well. There are thick areas of forest here where we have to drop low to fly and where it is hard to see. When the guards flew low he did it, out of sight of the guards that carried you.’

Clara remembered looking back over her shoulder and the Doctor vanishing from sight.

‘He attacked them? In mid air?’ Clara’s eyes were horrified, ‘But he was injured, how did he manage?’

‘His weapon, with the green light, he hid it in his jacket, he wanted to get it to you once he’d done with it, but I persuaded him that I could take care of you and get you past the rebels. He needed it for the plan to work and they never thought to look because they assumed he’d been locked in the tower all that time and he never regained the equipment,’ Eck said, ‘And his strength, it was beginning to return with the nectar.’

‘So it worked, the nectar?’

‘It just took longer than I expected.’ Eck swallowed, ‘I was beginning to worry.’

‘ _You_ were beginning to worry…’ Clara snapped, but the first hints of possible hope were beginning to grow inside her, ‘Then what?’

‘He fell to the ground some way, but we were waiting for him, me and Jidt, the Anushri who helped me get to you, we helped him to finish the soldiers, took their armour as disguise and then we took off with the hologram.‘ He smiled sheepishly, ‘We could not have carried the Doctor even if he had wished us to, the hologram weighs nothing and we are just drones,’ he held out his skinny arms, ‘we are not built for that purpose. I… I’m sorry Clara…’

Eck looked down ashamed. ‘I’ve caused you so much worry, I should have explained all of it…’

‘No Eck, _he_ should have explained…’

Clara brought her manacled hands to her face and rubbed over her nose and mouth, eyes cast heavenwards. No wonder when the Doctor had come back into view behind her she had been unable to feel him or see into his mind. It wasn’t him, it had been the hologram. He was somewhere below and behind her. It would have been nice to be let in on that plan. She didn’t know whether to be relieved that he was still back in the warzone apparently in one piece or make plans to kill him herself.

‘So he went by foot and you flew… you brought the hologram and dumped it on the stage loaded and ready to blow,’ she said trying to process it all.

‘Yes it was quite convincing,’ Eck said with some level of awe and no small amount of relief that Clara didn’t seem too angry, ‘The Doctor scanned his wounds to make copies for the interface, it looked like him to the smallest detail. His technology is incredible.’

‘So is his audacity,’ Clara grumbled. ‘So then what?’

‘Then we got you, the rift is closing and we promised the Doctor we would get you there while he finished the battle.’

‘How do you know its closing, other than in general terms?’

‘The interface was connected to your ship, it contained information about the most likely length of time it could sustain the opening. That time is running out quickly.’

‘So we have to hurry…. where’s the Doctor?’

‘He had things to attend to,’ Eck glanced through the trees towards the burning stage, ‘there is a battle to oversee, peace to bring, he said he had sworn he would help us so he had to do his bit, he would not simply leave.’

‘That sounds like him, well intentioned stubborn idiot,’ Clara made a few steps towards the burning stage, ‘Come on.’

‘Clara he wanted you to go… to the rift… he even got the hologram to tell you to….’ Eck said in a slightly pleading tone.

‘No, that’s not how this works and he knows it. And he needs to stop using the damn interface to give me messages.’

‘You are his priority, he entrusted you to me, I have to make sure… Clara!’ he scuttled after her raising one arm in protest.

She stomped through the undergrowth in her chains ducking under some branches and veering to avoid others until the heat of the fire could be felt again on her cheeks and she could see the ongoing battle before her. She looked deep into the centre of the fire where the hologram had stood and now saw only fighting Anushri and the burning corpses of the fallen. The air was thick with smoke and clawed at her throat. Carefully she made her way to the edge of the pool and began trailing around to the area where she had seen the Queen and King imprisoned in their dirty cage. Eck followed and when she glanced at him she noted that at his side he had drawn a makeshift weapon prepared to defend her if he could. She gave him a smile and he responded in kind although his anxiety was suddenly more prominent than before, he clearly wasn’t used to being the knight in shining armour yet and she found it rather sweet. She had no doubt he would get there one day. Grateful for his backing when her wrists were still bound and she remained vulnerable she continued to close in on the cage, the shape of the starving Queen coming into view, her husband clinging protectively to her but helpless in a sea of violence.

It was then that she saw the Doctor and for a moment she couldn’t breathe.

So often she forgot just who he was, this man she had tied herself to so willingly since Christmas, to whom she had been tied for generations before through the echoes in his timeline. In her day to day life he could be mistaken as human at times, reading in his armchair or sipping coffee from a mug. Sketching or tinkering at his workbench, making lists on his blackboard, scouring markets for supplies and bargaining with vendors. His humour could be black or it could be plain childish, his eyes would sparkle like a boy’s at the oddest things and he would brim with excitement at the prospect of a day out to a place he was desperate to share with her. He would surround her in her sleep and make love to her as the sun rose but he would complain if she stole the covers or if her hands were cold as she held him. He would warm his own in the sleeves of his jumper, tugged around his fingers and refuse like a child to wear gloves. His curls were always unruly but his clothes immaculate, he could hold himself with such grace and yet when he ran she would struggle to repress her laughter at his ungainly manner. She had grown so used to these ordinary everyday sights, the evidence of the man she loved, that she barely thought about the Time Lord.

Clara looked across the water, past the fire and into battle. The Time Lord was in evidence now. The Oncoming Storm had arrived.

And he was magnificent.

The Doctor was by the cage that contained the imprisoned Queen gazing down the slight incline at a rush of oncoming Anushri rebels. He stood firmly, legs tensed and hands by his thighs, poised with the sonic. He was calm, his shoulders relaxed but strong and his jaw set as he watched events unfold, the wisdom of years in his eyes as he calculated his move. By his side a handful of red drones were bracing themselves for the impact of the Green Anushri weapons but it never came as the light from the screwdriver blasted forth and knocked several of the enemy from their feet.

One or two kept coming and it was then Clara’s breath finally came to her as she watched the Doctor step forward and reach in one smooth gesture for the throat of one and hoist it against the cage wall, focusing the sonic on its thorax and burning it with power. Electricity jolted through its armour and blackened its skin, lightning moving across its chest plate in forks and smoke rising from its limbs. In a second he spun with the dead creature still in his hand and heaved its still twitching body into the gut of another Anushri sending it flying backwards and towards the fire which spread now onto land from the stage in billowing clouds.

The Doctor twirled again to face another, his jacket flaring behind him, red lining vicious like the mouth of a snake and in that second Clara caught the look in his eye as it changed from strategic calm to one of sheer fury and power. It made her heart freeze with a mixture of fear and pride. The Green Anushri had dared to involve him in their war, they had destroyed liberty and threatened the innocent and now they would pay the price, because what was more they had separated her from him and for all he knew now she was falling through the rift to the home dimension and he would end his days without her. The pain and anger tore from his body with every movement and he ploughed it directly into to those who continued to assault the plateau.

Here was the darkness he carried. The side of him he buried deep even from her. The strength and the ability to change worlds and the responsibility that came with it. Here was the sacrifice, the pain and the loss that came with that strength and threatened to take from him everything he cared for. She looked at him then, the mighty Time Lord and saw the loneliest man in the universe, the man who once again was driven by the fear that he would be alone always, that his destiny had taken away the woman he loved and abandoned him in this cruel dimension, and she knew she’d done the right thing in turning back.

She’d long underestimated his physical prowess, he rarely had the need to demonstrate his strength, but here it was clear as circumstances forced his hand and called upon him to use force. Clara watched as he dealt a blow to another wasp and kicked out with one heavy boot, forcing it to roll away from him. His elbow found another, and a third felt the power of his grip as he wrestled it by the shoulders and cast it aside. The crowd thinned, he dived then for the cage and sonicked the lock, gesturing to the red drones to free their Queen and King and get them to safety. Running across the embankment towards the burning stage he vaulted a neglected and once ornate bridge to reach an area as yet relatively untouched by the destruction all around. Here he paused, turning and tracking his eyes across the chaos, searching for something, for someone, for an end point.

With the red drones fighting around him he stood tall and elegant, the fire sending a breeze across the platform which blew out his coattails and ruffled his hair. There was soot smudged on his skin and grazes on his cheek but his shirt was torn open and Clara’s breath turned to the short laughter of relief as she saw that the nectar had indeed done its job. His skin there was pure and pale and unmarked, the damage from the rift was gone. He was whole. She made it a few more steps towards him when she heard his voice call out like thunder across the pools.

‘General!’ he stopped and listened for a response and around him the soldiers and drones paused too aware of the significance of what was about to happen. ‘General!’ he called again. ‘My name is the Doctor and I do believe we’ve met before… of course that was in another dimension a few hundred years ago… I’m a little late to this particular party but I hope I’ll make up for lost time….’ He smiled a wolfish smile as he drew a long gaze along the landscape, ‘I hope I won’t inconvenience you, I promise it won’t take long to finish the job…’

Clara felt a heavy claw land on her shoulder and the rumble of a deep alien voice.

‘Doctor,’ the General greeted him in a slow drawl and the Doctor swung to face him where he stood behind Clara, his left hand on her shoulder in warning, his right gripping Eck tightly by the back of his neck threatening to lift him from the ground and snap it as easily as a twig in autumn. She saw him run forward to the edge of the water then halt, his eyes flitting from face to face, judging. The pool between them was narrow and filled with debris and Clara knew that he could probably make it across but one slip and precious time would be wasted, one error of judgement and she or Eck were at the mercy of the General, he held the power here, his grip firm on her and the Doctor’s eyes filled with rushing vulnerable emotion.

She shouldn’t be here at all, he was angry with her stubborn refusal to leave but he was angrier with the wasp and his threat to harm her. She saw his fear turn to fury in his gaze as he glowered his wrath at the enemy. She saw his jaw clench and the knuckles of his hand turn white as he held the sonic. Clara could feel that all of hell was about to be unleashed in that corner of the swampland which burned and fell.

She didn’t count on the General making the first move.

With a roar he pushed at her body and she fell hard into the pool, its dark water closing over her quickly and her reflexes causing her to try and draw breath, succeeding only in inhaling a mouthful of stale liquid and slime. She struggled and spluttered but with her hands bound and legs chained she had no purchase and the pool was deeper than it looked. She was falling, dragged down by weeds and muck, the light above dimming as the fluid stung her eyes and sounds muffled into muted shouts. A shadow passed over her face as she sank and then everything became dark and foul, the water burning in her lungs and her heart bursting with panic. Long seconds ticked past and the world became more distant, the war above miles away and oblivious to her fate. She felt pressure in her head and the rapid thud of her own pulse in her ears.

A hand grabbing at her bindings and tugging her wrists. A second gripping the back of her top and pulling and suddenly she was thrown up and forward onto muddy soil, her face pressed into the grime.

‘Clara! Clara!’ Eck flipped her so that her mouth became free from the ground and with the movement her lungs remembered their purpose, coughing and retching up the putrid water of the pool, gasping for fresh air and drawing it in despite the rawness in every part of her throat and airway. Eck pulled her up and began rubbing at her back hard, at the same time pushing the wet hair from her face, his claw untangling weed from it and passing concerned over her cheek. She coughed again, the greyness in the periphery of her vision slowly dispelling as oxygen reached her brain.

‘Doc…tor,’ she spluttered.

‘There,’ Eck pointed back towards the remnants of the stage close by, now devoid of other soldiers and containing only two representatives of the warring sides; the green armoured General and the Doctor himself. All hell had indeed broken loose.

The pair were tangled in a ferocious embrace as the Doctor bore down with all his weight and strength onto the weapon arm of the General who threatened to wield his axe with precision and murderous intent. For a moment the trembling force of the Doctor’s muscles held them perfectly still, their eyes lock but then his strength gave way momentarily and the General again took the advantage, heaving him aside so that he landed hard on his back and was forced to scuttle backwards out of the way as the axe swung down and missed him by inches, burying itself in the ground by his head. The Doctor rolled and hurried to right himself, aiming the sonic at the back of the General and sending a heavy pulse of light towards him which knocked him forwards and splayed him momentarily on the ground.

By now the Doctor was fully upright but the General for all his size was quick to recover and charged forward slamming into the Time Lord’s body so that he doubled over and was driven backwards, the sonic flying from his hand. Clara tried to call out but her lungs still burned with fluid and she fell to hacking and spluttering, her eyes full of tears which she clawed away to watch events unfurl but she missed where the weapon had landed. Eck moved restlessly by her side, his face filled with alarm and distress as again the General’s axe swung towards the Doctor, this time across his abdomen and the Time Lord barely had seconds to duck away.

He was searching for the sonic but having to react to the oncoming attack and it was dividing his attention. He paced backwards warily, his arms extended and his eyes flitting between the wasp and the area around them, the sonic nowhere immediately in sight. Clara looked too but feared he would not find it amongst the debris mud and dark waters of the pool. In the meantime the gap was closing between the pair.

The General charged again and this time the Doctor wasn’t fast enough as the axe sailed in a downwards crescent through the air and up towards his gut. There was a tiny silence and then a sickening thud as it made contact with the Doctor’s body, slicing deep into his stomach and taking the wind from him, his legs folding under so that he crashed to his knees. The General reached forward and wrenched his weapon from his flesh before standing back and admiring the broken body before him. Blood poured again from the wound that had only recently healed.

Silence fell and in it Clara focused all of her mind on the Doctor, on watching every one of his laboured breaths, on will his hearts to keep beating. Silence fell and all became still.

Except for Eck.

‘Doctor!’ he had flown so quickly that the General had not noticed and now he landed by the Doctor’s side, stepping just a pace in front to block the path between the green Anushri Leader and the bleeding Time Lord. He had drawn his make shift weapon, a flimsy sword which he wielded now with little skill and all courage.

The General erupted into laughter.

‘Little drone,’ he said,’ ‘Do you really think you can defend him?’ You would be wiser to go back to the hole from whence you came and let your superiors end this war, you and your pathetic army.’

‘Not so pathetic, we have destroyed much of yours,’ Eck stood to his full height but from where she knelt in the mud Clara could see his arms tremble.

‘Pure luck,’ the General scoffed, ‘But now we have regained control, and when your Leader is gone,’ he gestured at the Doctor, still on his knees, head bent, ‘your hope will die too.’

Eck held out the sword protectively between the General and his intended victim.

‘I won’t let you,’ he said, ‘I won’t let you touch him…’

Clara’s eyes filled with tears.

The General stepped forward, his greater height and size looming over Eck and casting him into shadow. He raised his axe slowly, his black eyes never leaving the drone’s scarred face, his breath close enough to hit his skin. ‘You will die, drone,’ he said in a slow level voice, ‘and then I will finish your ‘Doctor’ and this war for good.’

He was too slow. With electrifying speed the Doctor rose from his position behind Eck and grabbed his flimsy sword, spinning to the side of the General he held it at shoulders height as his coat flared behind him. The movement distracted the General and his grip on his axe became loose so that with a well timed flick of his claw Eck had it free from him and swung it with all his might against the General’s thorax. He bent low and it was all the Doctor needed, the sword slicing smoothly through the air, through the thin neck of the wasp, so that the head of the General flew backwards and landed a few feet from where they stood.

Clara’s mouth fell open. The Doctor dropped the sword and briefly cast his eyes around him, this time spotting the sonic and retrieving it with a smooth bending action.

‘Nicely done, Eck,’ he said, regaining his breath.

Eck was watching him in disbelief. ‘Your… your injury…’

The Doctor opened his jacket and pulled back his shirt, even more damaged than it had been before. Underneath and deep bruise in the shape of a gaping axe wound appeared to be fading at remarkable speed.

‘Good stuff that nectar,’ The Doctor said, ‘when it eventually kicks in of course… took its time…. But I seem to have extra fast healing at the moment. It’s almost as impressive as what happens after regeneration if I accidentally chop a limb off… but not quite,’ he smiled in reassurance at Eck and then looked across at where Clara was kneeling on the bank of the pool.

‘You were supposed to be home by now,’ he said gently.

She stood and approached him, her breathing still painful and her heart pounding. He reached out and took her gently by the arms, looking down at her with nothing but concern and then with a quick movement sonicked the chains that bound her and let them fall away. She felt relief and love wash through her to see him whole and strong and unharmed and let her hands touch the pale skin of his chest tenderly, her fingers tracking to where his hearts beat doubly under his ribs. She smiled to feel them both and their sweet steady rhythm. And then the fear and the anger began to bubble in her, and the terror she had felt when she thought she had lost him again and she slowly turned her hands to fists and let the first blows of her anxieties patter down weakly onto his skin.

‘Don’t you ever… ever…’ she was sobbing and she hit out harder, his chest thumping with the resonance of her strikes, ‘Don’t you do that to me, ever again… don’t send me away, don’t leave me, don’t hide your plans, that is _not_ how this goes now, how many times do I… ’ her fists turned to palms and she struck him with her flattened hands against his sternum, the gold ring on her left flashing in the firelight of the ruined Anushri city. ‘You’ve no idea… you don’t know how much I…’

He gripped her hard and brought her to him, forcing her face against his chest and holding her in place, his hand tangling in her wet hair, his lips buried in it and his deep voice murmuring reassurances as he stroked her trembling shoulders and kissed her tears away.

‘Clara, Clara… shh….’ The minutes ticked by and after a pause she leaned back in his arms, swiping grime from her face the best she could and allowing him to kiss her lips once in request for forgiveness.

‘Ok?’ he asked. She nodded somewhat unconvincingly and straightened her clothes. Eck hovered close by as drained and overwraught she thought as she was. Finally she caught his eye and smiled in an attempt to comfort him.

‘Clara?’ he said in response, ‘the rift…. The rift will be closing, we should go.’

_Right. The rift. Next on our little list of challenges today._

‘Ok,’ she said with new purpose and looked to the Doctor, ‘Ready?’

She watched him look about him for a moment, at the ruins of the city and the horizon and the sun which threatened to set again after the brevity of the day. His face was grim.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘We need to move as fast as we can,’ he said, ‘Without the interface device I’ve no way of telling when it will close but there’s barely any time and…’

‘And…’

He looked at her with apology in his eyes, ‘Do you remember which way it was?’ he asked. Clara did a slow circle on the spot and looked out into the forests which surrounded the city and the pools. She had a vague idea it was in one direction but once inside the treeline she knew there were few paths and no landmarks. Despite her best efforts to remember her journey there was little to go by.

‘Oh,’ she said, her voice flat.

‘Oh,’ he echoed.

 


	13. Chapter 13

‘This is so typical of us,’ Clara was saying as they moved through the periphery of the forest, ‘We manage to survive an alternate dimension with deadly penetrating injuries, poisoning, drowning, falling from the sky,’ she gestured at the Doctor, ‘and total war between two armies of giant wasps but we can’t find our way through the mile or so of forest to the rift. We’re going to get stuck here because we’ll be too late and then what?’

The Doctor said nothing, trudged beside her hands in trouser pockets and his ripped shirt open to the waist, the only sign that he had recently been in battle as each graze and cut had healed under the power of the nectar. He appeared thoughtful.

‘And stop thinking!’ she exclaimed, ‘Stop thinking and join me in being exasperated.’

He cast her a sidelong glance and raised his eyebrows, ‘Thinking is more likely to find us the right path than getting hysterical.’

‘How? We can’t remember the right path and Eck’s never actually been there. Sorry Eck, we really do appreciate you coming with us, but none of us know the way.’

Eck piped up from behind them somewhat nervously, ‘The people from the village said it was to the south.’

‘So we’re heading south,’ The Doctor said calmly, smiling thinly at Eck.

‘Are we?’ Clara asked, ‘Because it all looks the same to me and we could easily be going round in circles. Don’t you have some sort of Time Lord SuperSense of Direction or something?’

‘I’ve lots of Time Lord skills, Clara, but that isn’t one of them.’

She let out a frustrated puff and clawed her hands through her still damp and tangled hair. Her clothes stuck to her and her shoes made squelching noises as she moved. She looked miserable and she was sure she smelled like the foul water in the pool that she had been choking in. She hugged herself and shivered.

‘Cold?’ the Doctor asked quietly as though slightly afraid of stirring her temper more.

‘Yes,’ she said tiredly, ‘Cold and wet and sore… and I want to go home… and yes I’m aware of how pathetic that sounds.’

They moved on a few more paces and then she felt the weight of the Doctor’s jacket land softly over her shoulders. Clara drew it around her gratefully and gave him a quick glance of thanks. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘It’s ridiculous. I’ve spent the last twenty four hours terrified you were going to be dead and wishing nothing more than to see you again and now you’re here and you’re Ok and all I can do is complain.’

‘Things are normal then,’ he said dryly.

Clara smirked. ‘Yes.’

They walked on a while longer through a dozen trees that all looked the same and over criss-crossing tracks of no particular direction. Clara watched as Eck’s multiple legs and his flimsy sword got tangled in some sort of briar and he had to stoop to unhook himself. It was good of him to come with them, insistent as he was that he act as the Doctor’s aide just as the original Eck had done, but she wondered what would become of him in this dimension now. Would things really improve?

Eventually the Doctor broke the silence, time was ticking by and he apparently had remained uninspired by what he had seen so far in the forest, as though he’d been waiting for some landmark or memory to leap up at him, except it hadn’t. ‘You’re right Clara we need to make progress or we could be wandering this dimension for all eternity,’ he said grimly.

‘You would be very welcome,’ Eck commented, ‘Now that the General is gone the Queen can be re-established and we can rebuild the city. You would be welcome to stay after all you’ve done for us.’

Clara smiled at him and his optimism kindly, ‘That’s sweet of you Eck but… well… this isn’t our dimension and…’ she wondered how to explain to him without hurting his feelings.

‘It’s OK,’ he said, ‘You have a home elsewhere. I just wanted to let you know.’

The Doctor looked about him. ‘What I don’t understand is why this planet is so different from the one in our dimension. I can see that our Anushri are far advanced in terms of technology and civilisation but it’s not just that. All this darkness, the red moon. On our plane it’s all blue skies and sunshine. What happened here?’ the he asked.

‘We had technology here once,’ Eck said, ‘but it fell to the wrong hands. The terraformation went badly wrong and scorched the earth, the moon. After that the Anushri were too afraid to touch it and the damage couldn’t be fixed. Over the years the elders have said that it was the will of the God’s, that they were offended by mortals meddling with creation.’

The Doctor looked at Clara, ‘there’s perhaps a lesson to be learned there and taken back to our dimension.’ She squinted at him and then a penny dropped.

‘Oh God!’ Clara stopped suddenly and Eck ran into the back of her apologetically. ‘Fido! Where’s Fido.’

‘You mean he isn’t following?’ the Doctor asked casting his eyes up into the trees, ‘I just sort of assumed he was around, if not on foot then up there,’ he pointed above him. ‘That’s what they do once they’ve imprinted, just follow blindly. When did you last see him?’

‘On the way to the execution, he was flying behind me, he was struggling to keep up a bit… oh God he’s only small what if he got exhausted and… and… Oh I hate this place!’ she cried suddenly.

‘Clara,’ the Doctor laid a hand on her arm and then quickly retracted it when he sensed it was still rather wet and slimy. He curiously rubbed the ooze between his thumb and finger and then tried to flick it away, an expression of disgust on his face. His eyes flicked over his precious coat and the stains which were forming on its red lining. Clara glared at him. ‘Sorry, I was saying,’ he resumed, ‘He’ll be fine they’re quite tough little things, he’ll catch up.’

‘How? He doesn’t know where we are!’

‘He’ll smell us… well you specifically… even under all that slime. He’s bonded remember, he can track you anywhere, and anywhere you’ve been…’ he paused and a small smile crept across his face, ‘I think we might have just found the solution to our problem,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Fido came with you from the rift, followed you all the way to the city. He knows the way Clara, he’s seen more of this world than you or me combined and right now he’s probably snuffling around trying to follow your scent…’

‘You think he can lead us home?’

‘Sure of it, they have a homing instinct.’

‘Well that’s great but he isn’t here is he?!’

‘No…’ the Doctor said, ‘No he isn’t…. yet….’

‘How do we find him?’

‘He’ll find us.’

‘ _When?_ ’

‘When you call him,’ the Doctor said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

‘What if he doesn’t hear?’

‘He will… just call him Clara. They really are remarkable little creatures,’ he smiled and flapped his hands at her in an urging motion, ‘Go on.’

Clara took a step back and went squelch. She looked around her doubtfully and glanced at Eck who looked back expectantly.

_Ok here goes._

‘Fido!’ she yelled and the Doctor flinched at her considerable volume. ‘Fido!’

The three of them paused to listen for any eight legged dogs approaching. ‘Fido, come here!’ Clara tried.

‘Do you have any food, you could try bribing him?’ the Doctor suggested, ‘They respond well to a bribe involving food.’ Clara stared at him, irritated.

‘I’m sorry I left my gourmet spider-dog food in my other coat pocket. The one that isn’t drenched in slime…. Fido!’

‘Wait!’ the Doctor held up one hand and looked upward again, his lips parted. ‘Listen,’ he whispered.

Clara strained to hear for a moment, her eyes ranging through the trees and up through the silver branches to the darkening sky. ‘Fido?’ she said.

There was a sudden crash from behind her and she turned just in time to see him plummet through the branches of a particularly tall tree and land with a splat and a rustle in a pile of dead leaves at its base.

‘Oh God, Fido!’ she rushed forward and knelt, digging her hands into the leaves and debris trying to locate the pup. ‘Fido! Where are you, are you OK?’

He erupted from the litter and propelled himself using all eight legs into the air so that he powered into Clara’s body and ended up slung in her arms. She was then immediately assaulted by his tongue. The Doctor bit back a laugh as the animal added a layer of Maltheus slime to that from the pools which covered her skin.

‘He must have been cruising above us,’ the Doctor said, ‘Now give him to me,’ he held out his hands.

Clara held the pup against her chest and stood up, ‘Why?’ she said suspiciously.

‘Because I speak Maltheus,’ the Doctor said patiently, ‘And we need him to lead us to the rift.’

‘What you’re just going to ask him?’ she said.

‘Yes?’

‘Oh… that seems… too simple somehow,’ she handed Fido over to the Doctor who gazed down into its big purple eyes and then lifted one large floppy ear up with the tips of his fingers. He leaned close and whispered something before placing the Maltheus at his feet again. They all waited.

Fido stood looking around the forest floor for a long minute occasionally casting his eyes up the trunks of trees and back down again. He turned on the spot and turned back looking thoroughly confused.

‘Are you sure he’s not a bit young for tracking,’ Clara said, ‘He might not have the skills yet.’

‘He has a nose, that’s all he needs.’

Fido bent and sniffed the ground, he looked up at the Doctor questioningly. The Doctor pointed at Clara. Fido looked at her blankly.

Clara rolled her eyes. ‘This isn’t going to work.’

‘Have faith.’

‘He’s too young… he probably doesn’t understand what you’re asking of him and…’ she trailed off as Fido very suddenly tensed and looked ahead his tail with its forked tip sticking straight out behind him at a forty five degree angle. It quivered slightly. After a moment’s pause he trotted forward a few metres and turned to look at the others.

‘That way I think,’ the Doctor said smugly. ‘Good boy.’

Clara stared after him wide eyed.

XXXXX

With Fido ahead trotting purposefully through the undergrowth, and the sky above turning red with the moon, the atmosphere changed to one that was a great deal more pressing. They were no longer wandering in hope, a little aimlessly through the trees, but walking at a pace behind the Maltheus on whom they were totally relying. They had to reach the rift and they had to reach it in time. If they failed they would be trapped and the main problem with that was no TARDIS.

No TARDIS meant no space travel and no time travel and well… no travel at all. It meant being marooned on a broken planet while a group of ill used wasp slaves tried to rebuild it. While Clara had nothing but admiration for the way Eck had conducted himself in the last day the Anushri home world was not where she wanted to spend the rest of her life. She also suspected that after Trenzalore the Doctor would go mad if he had to stay in once place for longer than around a week. No, not reaching the rift was not an option.

But she was flagging, really flagging. Her body and her mind had been through a lot in the last few days and it was finally catching her. She stumbled more often than she felt justified and dropped to the back of their little group. Her legs felt ridiculously heavy, clothes weighed down by pool water that seemed reluctant to dry and cool like ice. Though the Doctor’s coat offered her some warmth she could feel the aches of a chill beginning in her muscles and once or twice sneezed into the palm of her hand. Her healing potion she sensed was wearing off and her very human immune system was coming back on line. Dejected as she was she tried to focus on positive things, like the steam room in the TARDIS where she intended to defrost in the near future, and the huge comfortable bed she shared with the Doctor. These were things she had thought she would never do again and when she glanced up at his figure moving in front of her she remembered how grateful she was that he was still with her. She was grateful too for Eck who would occasionally attempt to chivvy her on with his own particular brand of unconditional admiration and a nudge of his claw.

The Doctor meanwhile was once again fiddling with the sonic, to what end Clara had no idea. He seemed to alternate between adjusting settings and pointing it randomly in front of him until it emitted a beam that satisfied him, and directing it at the course of the moon, the later she divined in order to track time. He was still charged by his potion and showed no signs of tiring and Clara was thankful that at least one of them was functioning on all cylinders.

They rounded a dense cluster of trees and almost tripped over Fido in the process. He had come to a halt and now stood poised at the edge of a familiar clearing, one with several dead green Anushri littering it. The rift couldn’t be far, because this was where Clara had found the Doctor. He turned and winked at her.

‘Nearly there,’ he said. ‘Come on Fido, which way now?’

The little Maltheus began snuffling around the clearing, pausing at the centre where a smattering of blood still stained the ground. He lingered over it and then looked up at Clara and whined.

‘It’s OK,’ she said, ‘I’m all better, see.’

He looked down again doubtfully and then traced a few steps away from the stain and across to the otherwise of the clearing. The Doctor pointed the sonic into the trees and Clara could see where branches were broken and torn along the path of her flight.

‘Down there,’ the Doctor said, ‘That’s where you were running from, the rift is beyond. Good boy.’

Just a few minutes away, a few minutes and they would be there. Please God let it still be open, please God don’t let this all be for nothing.

Fido began to trot along the makeshift path, forked tail held high with pride and the Doctor lighting his path. Clara carefully picked her way through the undergrowth which scratched against her skin and became increasingly irritated by her clothing catching on twigs. Her fatigue was becoming unbearable and her movements clumsy, an absolute deficit of adrenaline after events leaving her heavy limbed and ungainly. But it wasn’t far now, and it drove her on a little so that she managed to pick up some speed. To distract herself from the pains in her muscles she spoke to Eck.

‘You know you said we could stay here,’ she said.

‘Oh, yes,’ he buzzed, his eyes bright.

‘Likewise… You could come with us too? You know if you wanted.’

Eck fell silent as they walked side by side as best they could through the trees. ‘I would be welcome in your dimension?’ he asked.

‘Very,’ Clara smiled, ‘The other Eck might find it a little odd to begin with but I’m sure he’d adapt… the thing is… so much has happened here, so much war and destruction, so many bad things, and you… you helped us almost without question, you saved us. You were the one good thing in this world from the start.’

Eck looked down, embarrassed and lost for words.

‘I think what I’m saying is you deserve something for that.’ Clara said, ‘You deserve a good life.’

‘But this is my world,’ he said, ‘And I am free again. There is much to be done here, I cannot leave now, even to go to the beautiful place you described.’

‘Are you sure?’ Clara asked, she hated to think of him in this dark dimension.

‘It is very kind,’ Eck said, ‘And I _am_ grateful but… if I were to just abandon my world because another world was easier or more beautiful, it would be wrong. How would my world ever be beautiful if I did that? I used to be a drone, a slave, I had no say in how my life played out. Now I do… and I have a purpose _here_. I won’t abandon it.’

Clara squeezed his hand and walked on.

‘We’re here,’ the Doctor said from nowhere and they looked up to find him a few feet away, the light of the rift piercing the trees and surrounding him so that his shape cast a familiar silhouette on gold and Clara’s nightmares returned to her just briefly. ‘And it’s still open, just about…But we aren’t alone.’ His voice was quiet and controlled, devoid of any joy at finding the way home.

Her heart dropped like a stone, this wasn’t supposed to happen, not now, not when they were so close. Clara bent and scuttled forward to join the Doctor where he had crouched amongst the vegetation. At her feet the Maltheus pawed at her, climbing back into her arms and pressing against her chest. Looking out between the trees she could see the rift, its golden orange jagged outline glowing strongly in the dark of the forest, but it was clear that it was nowhere near as long as it had been when she had fallen through it. Indeed it looked about half of its original size and flickered briefly now and then to remind them of its fragility. Clara had no idea how much time has passed both on this side of the dimension and on the side where the TARDIS was holding open the portal, but it was clear that time was running out. She glanced at the Doctor’s face, illuminated as it was by the sickly glow and saw that his jaw had set grim and firm.

In front of the rift several Green Anushri were pacing back and forward, staring with a mixture of awe and excitement at the strange new fixture in the forest. Presumably these soldiers like those they had encountered before formed some sort of patrol in the realm and perhaps did not even have knowledge of what had happened in the city. Clara tried to count them but their movements and the distorted light from the rift made it difficult. Certainly their own little group was significantly outnumbered.

‘What do we do?’ she whispered.

‘Well whatever it is we need to get a move on,’ the Doctor replied. ‘See that flickering,’ as if on command the rift blanched and vanish only to quickly reappear again, ‘It’s failing, at any time it might do that and just not come back. We need to get through.’

‘How will you get past them?’ Eck asked in concern. The silence of the reply was heavy and laced with a horrible inevitability.

‘I’d say a diversion but I’m all out of exploding holograms,’ the Doctor said, his eyes flitting over the scene. He passed one hand over his face and sighed into his palm trying to think. In front of him the rift blinked again, this time remaining closed for two or three seconds before stuttering back. Its length had decreased again.

‘We don’t have time,’ the Doctor cursed under his breath with a voice tinged with both sadness and resignation, ‘We don’t have any time…. Clara… you’re going to go through.’

‘What?’

Something in his face twitched, something which indicated a struggle within. They had just been reunited and now again he had to play his part, he had to protect her, place her first. She looked at his eyes and saw fatigue and a quiet submission. He had no choice and he would never do anything different, but oh how he wished just for once… He looked away from her and she felt a wave of sadness wash over him.

‘Don’t argue with me, just do as you’re told, that rift is going to shut down any minute and you need to be on the right side of it when it does. I’m going to deal with them and you…’ he looked at her hard, ‘You are going to go home.’

Clara opened her mouth to protest and he seized his opportunity, covering her lips with his, kissing her deeply, the smooth slide of his tongue tracing once over hers and the gentle tug at her lower lip. He pulled back and stood, sonic held before him. She reached for his arm but it was too late.

‘Hey!’ he shouted stepping out before the rift, ‘Over here!’ The gathered wasps turned and faced him as one, a symphony of buzzes and clicks washing over them as the Doctor moved to the middle of the group, the distraction and the sacrifice once more, except this time it was not his image but him and him alone. Clara hesitated looking rapidly between them and his figure and the shortening rift, but before she could make anything close to a decisive move she felt Eck’s hands on her pulling and stumbled out towards the group.

‘Eck!’ she staggered from shock, clutching the Maltheus tightly to her, ‘What are you doing?’

‘You’re going,’ he said, his voice strong, ‘Just like the Doctor said, you have to go home.’ He adjusted his grip and heaved and she was propelled towards the rift, the heat of it a familiar burn on her skin as she strained to look back at what was occurring. Some of the Anushri had turned to look at her hungrily, their armour glinting and their weapons poised. Eck stepped in front of her, braced.

‘No, not her!’ the Doctor said and let forth a burst of something from the sonic which attracted their attention back. ‘Clara, run! Go! Look behind you, its closing!’

And she looked, and it was. The edges creeping closer, the blinking and fluttering pulsing deeper and the golden light seeming to fade. She hesitantly reached a hand towards it and the fire no longer burned instead emitting a tepid warmth. She looked back at the Doctor and at the group of Anushri slowly closing around him.

‘Clara, you have to go, now,’ Eck at her side, ‘Clara, please.’

‘I can’t go without him,’

‘Then you will be trapped here.’

‘Then I’ll be trapped here!’

‘This isn’t your world Clara, this isn’t your dimension,’ Eck said painfully, ‘Please, you deserve a better life than this… both of you.’

Clara wrenched her arm free of him and tried to move back towards the Doctor.

But he changed the setting on the sonic and then it was blasting towards her, knocking her back, hitting the rift and illuminating it with the green power she had seen from the transmuters. She watched as his body tensed against the emission, leaning against it, bracing himself to hold the rift open. The sonic spluttered and burned and she gasped in horror as the waves of green light ran through his body, the pain clearly written on his face.

‘Move!’ he called, ‘It won’t hold long.’

Eck again, his eyes frantic, ‘Clara!’

‘No, I won’t go without him!’

Eck looked between the two, the young human woman and the ancient Time Lord, facing each other across the enemy, their eyes locked and with them their intent to protect one another. And he knew, he understood something at last about love.

Neither would move, neither would abandon the other. Equally stubborn, equally flawed, equal in every way and perfect in their imperfection. They would die for one another without thought or regret, they would give their worlds and lives to see the other survive. But without each other they were nothing.

Behind them the rift was quivering now, the power from the sonic draining, the force of time and space closing in. And still they waited, unable to tear themselves apart in the face of their own demise.

Sometimes it takes a stranger to save a soul. Sometimes he saves two.

Eck did the only thing he could, they only thing that at that moment felt right and when Clara looked back she understood what it was she had witnessed and maybe why he had done it and it made her heart ache and swell.

She felt him push and then she was falling. Falling through the dying rift and watching the sky turn from red to blue and the scene shift and twitch before her.

She was falling and she watched Eck fly again to the Doctor’s side, watched him draw his sword and take the sonic from the Time Lord’s stunned grip. She heard him shout to him to run, before the rift closed forever and the Doctor paused, torn and fraught, unwilling to accept the sacrifice of another so that he could live but drawn to the hole in the dimensions none the less, drawn by his need for her and the fear that he was nothing without her. He looked at the failing light in desperation and so did she.

It flickered overhead and the images blurred, one atop the other, worlds colliding and merging. Time ending, parting them.

Eck’s voice again, clear and sound and true.

_Go. Go if you Love Her._

The Doctor dived for the rift and then one final image flared up from the crack in time and space.

Clara saw Eck standing in the centre of the enemy, weapons drawn, a sword and a screwdriver, light flaring from the last moments of sonic’s power even as it burned in his hand and his body was consumed by green flame. She saw him standing bravely, holding his ground, buying them time even though she knew it would cost him all of his. And as the rift closed finally she caught his dark eyes, bright in the fires between dimensions, no longer a slave but a hero.

She tumbled into the world with the Doctor by her side and the fire went out.

 


	14. Epilogue

 

There were various ways of ending an adventure and Clara had come across most of them in her time with the Doctor. Sometimes it was a case of getting away by the skin of their teeth and diving panting and fearful into the TARDIS while the Doctor skidded to a halt by the console and yanked a lever to send them flying into the vortex.

Sometimes they would just want to leave, regardless of the outcome, the planet being unwelcoming or disappointing or some other variant of not what they expected and the Doctor would tie up the loose ends and disappear into the TARDIS silently, Clara’s cue to follow and go. She would be left to explain to the people they had met, or apologise for his rudeness and then join him in the ship telling him off for his abrupt manner and aloof approach.

Sometimes they would get back to the ship and go directly their separate ways to mull over what had happened while at others they would sit together in the library and talk, hot drinks warming their hands and the fire soothing them.

Sometimes she just wanted dropped at the flat. Or in the school.

Sometimes she’d stay a week on board.

And sometimes when things were less pressured and had ended well they would spend an extra day or so on whichever planet it might be and take in the sights and sounds at the behest of their hosts. Clara had been sure that this would be the case with the Anushri, whose worried faces crowded around them as they fell from the closing rift. She and the Doctor had lain on their backs, side by side, the blue sky fresh above them and felt for one another’s hand to hold in silence as this dimension’s Eck hovered concerned by them and the Maltheus wriggled from Clara’s grip to run in circles around their bodies.

She had been sure they would stay a day or two in the luxuriant suite and enjoy the peaceful city and its pleasant inhabitants. She had been sure they had earned that reward. After all everything had worked out, hadn’t it? They had survived, the rift was closed and beyond it in the alternate world a revolution was triggered, a hero made.

But it didn’t feel the way she had thought it would, her relief at her reunion with the Doctor aside, and Clara knew as she stood at the TARDIS door the next morning that something about this particular trip epitomised her life now that she was full time on the ship. The endings of adventures would never be the same and neither would the adventures themselves. Exploits and excitement, stars and planets, and by her side a man she would die for given the need, made her heart leap with the knowledge of how serious it had all become for both her and him, and bleed with the bittersweet sense that there would be loss in her life too. Loss of the people and places she had left behind on earth, loss of the new friends she met on her journeys from time to time, and always that fear, that shadow of his loss haunting her even at her happiest moments. She had spent just a day convinced that he was gone forever and the scars from that would never heal. The idea that she could ever feel that way again terrified her but she knew she had no choice.

She loved the Doctor and she was bound to him always. If he needed her she would be there, no questions asked. It was her job to protect him, her job to save the Time Lord for her sake as well as his. Forever was too long to be without him, when just one day had been too painful to bear.

Clara let her eyes wander past the group of Anushri who had come to see them off and across the ornate bridge to where a statue was being erected in honour of a familiar face, Eck looking for all the world like he wanted the ground to swallow him, because it wasn’t him they honoured but his alternate, and they were different weren’t they? Different creatures made of different material?

And yet…

She smiled.

It took her a moment to remember that the little wasp across the bridge was not the same Eck who had died for them the day before, that he wasn’t the hero who saved their lives. Different paths had taken them in different directions, left different scars upon their faces, but deep within they had the same courage and the same heart, and she felt that perhaps Eck’s story wasn’t over; that there were greater things to come. One day he would earn that statue for himself.

‘You’re doing the thing…’ the Doctor’s voice over her shoulder, ‘The sad smile thing. It’s confusing.’

Clara felt him move behind her and slip his hands around her waist, his fingers tracing soft patterns through the flimsy fabric of her dress. He bent and kissed her neck softly before nosing her hair, breathing in deep and long, savouring her scent and being and life. When they had collapsed back into this dimension they had quietly gone back to their suite, retreated together to bed exhausted, thankful just to hold the other in safety, for the calm breathing of their lover in their arms and the lullaby of one another’s heartbeats as they slept. This morning she could sense that he ached with gratitude, Clara could feel it in his mind, in the tension of his body and the way his muscles cradled her against his chest, he wanted her and he wanted to take them away from this place. The rising sun had made it real for them, they were alive and they were together, but only just. They were the lucky ones.

She smiled a little wider at his perpetual confusion over human emotions, but her expression was just as sad, ‘Do you think he’s made of the same stuff?’ she asked, ‘As the other Eck?’

‘Well you would know.’

‘Why would I know?’

He turned her in his arms and gazed down at her with eyes that shone blue and clear. ‘Clara Oswald I have met many versions of you in the past and although none of them quite match up to the perfection that is the original I can tell you that you are all, every one, made of the same stuff.’

‘But you prefer the original of course?’ she clarified, her smile becoming lighter.

‘Of course.’

She laid her head against his chest and let him stroke long fingers through her hair.

‘Are we going?’ she asked.

‘Yes, I think so, it wasn’t quite the break I’d intended for us. The rift is fixed but…’

‘Time to move on.’

‘Time to go home,’ he corrected, ‘We could go somewhere more exotic, technically I still owe you a honeymoon, but somehow I can’t quite stomach a trip away right now.’

‘Home sounds good,’ she kissed his chest, between his hearts. ‘We can have the honeymoon there.’

He nodded towards the milling Anushri in the centre of the city, ‘Said all your goodbyes?’ he asked.

‘For now.’

‘Come on then.’

He turned and she followed into the relative darkness of the TARDIS, swinging the door closed behind her and watching with a sudden sense of normality and calm as the Doctor set about the controls. He typed in co-ordinates and punched buttons with practiced fluency, his body visibly relaxing now he was in his own environment, and as he pulled the lever for dematerialisation Clara caught the darkness around his eyes, the fatigue from so close a brush with death, and vowed to take care of him. The engines started and she felt the first of the heaviness leave her heart.

XXXXXXXX

‘You must have a spatula!’ Clara called up the stairs of the cottage, ‘You have everything else in this kitchen, a spatula is a _basic_ , you should have one!’

‘Why is this so important?’ she could hear him reluctantly moving about upstairs, presumably dressing although secretly she hoped the clothing he found was minimal.

‘Because I’m making pancakes.’

‘You don’t need a spatula for pancakes you just flip them.’

‘How do I get the edges up to flip them without a spatula?’ she returned to the frying pan and fretted over the soon to be burning food.

‘If you got your mixture right in the first place…’ he emerged into the kitchen.

‘There’s nothing wrong with my mixture!’

The Doctor leaned over her and plucked a hitherto hidden spatula from a utensil jar. Clara snatched it rather ungratefully and received a roll of the eyes as he turned to help himself to coffee. She allowed herself a few seconds to take in the shape of his back and shoulders through the light fabric of his dressing gown before she went back to pretending to be annoyed.

‘What’s with all the food anyway?’ he asked.

‘You’re too thin.’

He raised his eyebrows at that.

‘You are, you’re losing weight.’

‘I wonder why…’ he commented, ‘Must be something to do with all the exercise I’ve been taking recently.’

Clara snorted and finished levering the edge of her pancake up. She allowed him a quick glance with her huge brown eyes which communicated fathomless affection despite her apparent irritation. He smiled and took a gulp of his coffee as she flipped the pancake over. Clara could feel his eyes wandering over her face and neck and dipping down beneath her robe. Her skin felt hot under his gaze and it was with some difficulty that she managed to prepare another few pancakes as he lingered by her side, hands occasionally caressing her hip as he moved around the kitchen.

‘Sit down and I’ll bring them over,’ she ordered eventually.

‘Yes, boss.’ He sat expectantly as she began to serve generous portions.

‘Clara… you know I really don’t need…’ he was cut off.

‘Wait... wait do you hear that…?’ Clara dumped the last pancake on a plate and removed the frying pan from the heat. ‘Shh… hear it?’

‘Hear what?’

‘Buzzing.’

‘Buzzing?’

‘Buzzing like a bluebottle.’

‘There are no bluebottles here Clara, in fact there are very few lifeforms at all, mainly flora. I haven’t got as far as inventing living creatures for the planet yet.’

‘Well something is living in here…. It’s making a noise.’

Clara tried to pinpoint the direction of the buzz while the Doctor rather impatiently pulled the pancakes towards him and dug in.

‘Eat quietly I’m listening,’ Clara said.

‘If I don’t eat the sound of my stomach grumbling will drown out whatever you think you can hear.’

‘Buzzing! There!’ Clara made for the front door and the Doctor idly followed her through the living area, plate in hand and fork suspended ready. He leaned against the wall and watched her with amusement as she bent down and traced the edge of the doorframe with one finger.

‘I can hear it,’ she said slowly straightening, eyes wide.

‘Clara I keep telling you there aren’t any insects here, well none that would make that noise. The odd butterfly….’

‘There!’ she pointed.

‘What?’

‘There, look!’

The Doctor joined her side and looked in the direction of her finger.

On the heavy wood door a single insect crawled slowly over the top panel, its wings occasionally rustling and emitting the same buzz Clara had heard from the kitchen. It wandered rather blindly back and forth trying to find its way out of its predicament, looking for a familiar landmark beyond the expanse of brown wood. Its body was a familiar yellow and black.

‘It’s a wasp!’ Clara cried.

Next to her the Doctor sighed and popped his plate down on a table. ‘Hang on I’ll get something to swat it with,’ he said, ‘The sonic has a setting….’

‘No!’ Clara placed herself between him and the wasp and he looked at her curiously.

‘No? Aren’t you worried it’ll sting you?’

‘It’s not doing any harm.’

‘You hate wasps… oh….’ He hesitated, ‘You _like_ wasps now? I mean since the Anushri?’ he looked genuinely curious.

‘They changed my opinion of them.’

‘Really?’

Clara looked at it crawling over the edge of the doorframe and approaching her via the wall. She sounded convincing but she knew her face was giving her away. She hated getting stung.

‘Don’t kill it,’ she said by way of negotiation, ‘But you can… you know…. Usher it out.’

‘Oh can I?’ he laughed, _‘I_ can usher it? _You_ don’t want to usher it? Seeing as you’re such a fan of wasps these days.’

The wasp buzzed and inched closer to where Clara was standing.

‘No feel free,’ she encouraged.

‘Do you know what is interesting?’ The Doctor said as Clara shuffled out of the way, ‘How it got here. I mean how does a species just appear like that?’

‘I don’t know… look just open the door and…’ she flapped her hands in a ‘get out’ gesture. The Doctor made great show of opening the door for the lady and then resumed his thought process.

‘I suppose it could have flown into the TARDIS, hung around a while and then flown out… or…maybe it’s been here all the time…’ his face suddenly brightened, ‘Perhaps it _evolved_.’

‘What?’ Clara looked distractedly between the wasp and her husband.

‘Maybe it’s evolved, here on the planet, or maybe it’s a bit of both. Maybe it hitched a ride in the TARDIS and then came here and _adapted_. It’s always been a question of mine, how does life truly _become_? From inert to sentient? Has this thing just popped into existence from nowhere? Has it been sent by a higher power or did it guide itself? Why here, why now?’ His expression was one of utter fascination.

‘Doctor! Enough with the theories…. The _wasp_!’

‘Alright, alright,’ he fanned his hand towards the wasp and it took off from its place on the wall flying slowly towards Clara until it hovered in front of her face curiously, its huge black multilensed eyes peering at her and reflecting her image. Clara squinted at it with interest and the faintest hint of recognition. She felt suddenly more at ease.

‘It likes you,’ the Doctor joked. ‘Come on, out with you, Clara won’t let me swat you but I wouldn’t push your luck.’ The wasp floated for another moment in front of her before very deliberately moving to the Doctor for a cursory glance and bobbing once before him. Clara saw him frown at it and then with a final buzz of its wings it turned and flew out of the door.

The pair stood and watched for a second before the Doctor swung the door shut again.

‘So a new life arrives on our little planet,’ Clara mused, ‘Seemingly from nowhere… Evolution you think?’ she asked moving back to the kitchen.

The Doctor resumed his seat and his breakfast. ‘Evolution… adaptation, chance… Something like that has brought that little wasp here…’ he agreed.

Clara smiled to herself with a sudden feeling that she understood the answer better than he. ‘Evolution adaptation or chance…. Or something like that,’ she said.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PS. Fido lives happily ever after with the Doctor and Clara.


End file.
